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

This simulation shows a gas cloud, discovered in 2011, as it passes close to the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. Observations with ESO's Very Large Telescope in 2013 show that the cloud is so stretched that the front part of it has passed the closest point and is travelling away from the black hole at more than 10 million km/h, whilst the tail is still falling towards it.