The Nature paper on PS1-10jh, believed to be a disruption of a star by a supermassive black hole, has been unveiled today, along with a press release featuring some snapshots and movies of a simulation I ran of such a disruption. This event is a real game-changer, not just because it appears to be a relatively uncommon star that was disrupted (perhaps 1 out of 100 stars, at best), but also because it is the first flare that has been observed both during the rise and the decay phase, which will actually allow for more sophisticated models of stellar disruption to distinguish between possible models.
I’d like to provide some additional details on the movies generated for the press release, for those who are curious. The disruption shown is that of a star whose mass is less centrally concentrated than that of the Sun; this is more consistent with the hypothesis that this object is partially supported by degeneracy pressure. Also, the disruption simulation was performed assuming a $10^3:1$ mass ratio, whereas the actual disruption was likely to be $>10^6:1$. This was done to be able to follow the fallback of material, as the larger the mass ratio, the longer this takes as compared to the time of the disruption itself. The dynamics of the disruption, and all of the qualitative effects seen in the video, should be similar to what is seen in the video, but the relative scales of the features to one another (for instance, the width of the stream as compared to the distance of the stream to the black hole) will be different for more reasonable mass ratios.
The question of whether the star that was disrupted is indeed the core of a red giant (as proposed by the authors) remains, in my opinion, unanswered, as there are other He-rich stars that may be capable of producing a similar flare. This question can only be addressed by our improving our models of stellar disruption, which our group is very busily doing.