About 750 million light-years away from Earth, a wandering supermassive black hole is sneaking up on stars and eating them. Featured VideoThese “orphan” black holes, detached from their usual positions at the center of their galaxies, are a rare sight. The event certainly puts our own solar system into perspective: At its brightest, the star that the black hole consumed radiated with the strength of about 10 billion of our suns, and the black hole is estimated to weigh about 1.2 billion times the mass of our sun. Experts think orphan black holes might be set loose when larger galaxies collide with smaller ones, with the lightest black hole becoming untethered. AdvertisementThe Swift Observatory is due an orbit boost in the coming months, after which—together with new telescopes and instruments coming online—it can continue the quest for more wandering black holes.