A star, caught in the grips of a supermassive black hole.
The immense gravity slowly strips the stellar material from its parent, forming a disc of gas around the black hole as it converts gravitational energy into electromagnetic radiation, producing a bright source of light visible on multiple wavelengths.
Then, even more dramatically, a narrow beam of particles shoots out of the black hole at almost the speed of light.
This galactic phenomenon -- known as relativistic jets -- was first discovered almost five years ago.
Further clues as to how a black hole feeding on a star produced such outbursts were revealed in March, and now researchers have used an Earth-sized radio telescope network to make record-sharp observations of the phenomenon.
Red flashes reveal black hole feeding on star (see picture)
'Sharpest measurements ever made'
An international team of astronomers, led by Jun Yang at Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology, used the European VLBI Network (EVN) to study the event known as Swift J1644+57.
First discovered in 2011, Swift J1644+57 is a supermassive black hole slowly swallowing a star. Or rather, was, the galaxy in which the incredible astronomical event is taking place is so far away its light takes 3.9 billion years to reach Earth.
As the ancient star was sucked into the black hole, Yang says it produced jets of light and particles equivalent to the size "of a 2 euro coin on the Moon as seen from Earth."
"These are some of the sharpest measurements ever made by radio telescopes," he said in a statement.
Such accuracy was made possible by new technology that uses a network of huge telescopes across our planet, knitting together their observations into an Earth-sized scope that is far more powerful than the sum of its parts.