Tidal disruption

Tidal disruption is the breakup of an object when differences in gravitational pull across it exceed the forces holding it together. It occurs near massive bodies and can produce debris, streams, or accretion flows.

Tidal force: A difference in gravitational force across an extended object, arising because gravity varies with position. This differential pull supplies the stress that can overwhelm an object's cohesion.
Tidal disruption event: A flare produced when a star is torn apart by a supermassive black hole. It is the most luminous astronomical manifestation of tidal breakup.
Black hole mass: The mass of a black hole, which determines its gravitational field and event-horizon size. It sets whether a star is disrupted outside the event horizon or swallowed intact.
Roche lobe overflow: The transfer of matter from a star that expands beyond the region gravitationally bound to it in a binary system. It involves escape through a binary system's gravitational boundary, not necessarily wholesale tidal breakup.
Fallback accretion: The return of gravitationally bound debris to a central object after a disruption. Returning stellar gas powers much of a tidal disruption event's evolving emission.
Roche limit: The distance from a primary body within which a satellite can be torn apart by tidal forces. It estimates where a body's self-gravity can no longer resist the primary's tidal stress.
Shoemaker–Levy 9: A comet that broke into fragments during a close passage by Jupiter in 1992 and collided with the planet in 1994. Its breakup and subsequent impacts provide a well-observed planetary example.
Accretion disk: A rotating disk of gas and debris spiraling around a massive central object. Debris from a disrupted star can circularize and feed a luminous disk.
Impact fragmentation: The breakup of a body through the energy and stresses of a collision. Unlike tidal disruption, its immediate driver is impact rather than differential gravity.
Orbital circularization: The conversion of an eccentric orbit into a more nearly circular one through dissipative interactions. Debris streams must lose orbital energy to form a stable accretion flow.

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