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It has been suggested that an unavoidable consequence of the existence ofsupermassive black holes, and the best diagnostic of their presence innon-active galaxies, would be occasional tidal disruption of stars captured bythe black holes. These events manifest themselves in form of luminous flarespowered by accretion of debris from the disrupted star into the black hole.  Candidate events among optically non-active galaxies emerged in the past fewyears. For the first time, we have looked with high spatial and spectralresolution at one of these most extreme variability events ever recorded amonggalaxies. Here, we report measuring a factor ~200 drop in luminosity of theX-ray source RXJ 1242-1119 with the X-ray observatories Chandra and XMM-Newton,and perform key tests of the favored outburst scenario, tidal disruption of astar by a supermassive black hole. We show that the detected `low-state'emission has properties such that it must still be related to the flare. Thepower-law shaped post-flare X-ray spectrum indicates a `hardening' compared tooutburst. The inferred black hole mass, the amount of liberated energy, and theduration of the event favor an accretion event of the form expected from the(partial or complete) tidal disruption of a star (abstract abbreviated).

A Huge Drop in the X-Ray Luminosity of the Nonactive Galaxy RX J1242.6-1119A, and the First Postflare Spectrum: Testing the Tidal Disruption Scenario