NASA scientists examined the death of a star at the hands of a black hole, detailing how the latter's intense gravitational pull fragments the former slowly.

Their study published in the journal Nature, the researchers dissected the event using X-ray telescopes, The Washington Post reported. They took particular interest in what leads to a black hole's consumption of a star, which is called "tidal disruption."

"We have seen evidence for a handful of tidal disruptions over the years and have developed a lot of ideas of what goes on," study lead author Jon Miller, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said in a news release. "This one is the best chance we have had so far to really understand what happens when a black hole shreds a star."

NASA also shared an animation of the event in a new video.

"The black hole tears the star apart and starts swallowing material really quickly, but that's not the end of the story," study co-author Jelle Kaastra, of the Institute for Space Research in the Netherlands, said in the release. "The black hole can't keep up that pace so it expels some of the material outwards."

The researchers dubbed the tidal disruption they observed ASASSN-14li and stated it took place 290 million light years from Earth.

"These results support some of our newest ideas for the structure and evolution of tidal disruption events," study co-author Cole Miller, of the University of Maryland in College Park, said in the release. "In the future, tidal disruptions can provide us with laboratories to study the effects of extreme gravity."