We model the 1990 giant X-ray flare of the quiescent galaxy NGC 5905 as the
tidal disruption of a star by a supermassive black hole. From the observed
rapid decline of the luminosity, over a timescale of a few years, we argue that
the flare was powered by the fallback of debris rather than subsequent
accretion via a thin disk. The fallback model allows constraints to be set on
the black hole mass and the mass of debris. The latter must be very much less
than a solar mass to explain the very low luminosity of the flare. The
observations can be explained either as the partial stripping of the outer
layers of a low-mass main sequence star or as the disruption of a brown dwarf
or a giant planet. We find that the X-ray emission in the flare must have
originated within a small patch rather than over the entire torus of
circularized material surrounding the black hole. We suggest that the patch
corresponds to the ``bright spot'' where the stream of returning debris impacts
the torus. Interestingly, although the peak luminosity of the flare was highly
sub-Eddington, the peak flux from the bright spot was close to the Eddington
limit. We speculate on the implications of this result for observations of
other flare events.Comment: 25 pages, including 5 figure
