Gas cloud being ripped apart by the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way

New observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope show how a gas cloud now passing close to the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy is being ripped apart. The horizontal axis shows the extent of the cloud along its orbit and the vertical axis shows the velocities of different parts of the cloud. The cloud is now dramatically stretched out and the velocity of the front is several million km/h different from that of the tail.