NASA video shows exploding star fading away over the course of a year

NASA released a video this week depicting what it said was the titanic explosion and gradual fading of a supernova star in a distant galaxy.

The explosion, observed by the Hubble space telescope, released “as much energy in a matter of days as our Sun does in several billion years,” the space administration said in a release.

The supernova was observed in the galaxy NGC 2525, located around 70 million light years from Earth. Hubble first detected the explosion in 2018.

Supernovae occur in the end-stages of the lifetimes of certain stars. The catastrophic explosions, triggered by runaway nuclear fusion, are among the brightest objects in the universe.

Upon a star’s explosion, its remnant is either destroyed or transformed into a neutron star, or else it collapses into a black hole.