Have you ever wondered what stars are made of? Well, stars are burning balls of gas just like the sun is. However, as they are so far away from our solar system they appear as tiny fairy lights lighting up the sky. When a star explodes due to various reasons, there is an immense amount of light that is released within the solar system, which we obviously can’t see with the naked eye, but is recorded through telescopes and machinery. Recently, some astronomers saw a bright light that was 500 times brighter than a star explosion. This sparked their curiosity.

The gigantic explosion which took place was one of the brightest supernovas ever recorded by scientists. The supernova that burst was about five times the mass of Earth and occurred around 3.6 billion light-years away from Earth.

The team working on this research have scientists from Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard College Observatory. The scientists suggest that the supernova was a result of two stars that were merging and cause the giant explosion. The explosion was 10 times brighter than an average supernova explosion that occurs.

The lead writer of the article says that not only was this one of the brightest supernovas witnessed by researchers, it also has features which make it rare and unique in comparison to other supernovas that scientist have previously witnessed.

In a regular supernova the amount of radiation that is released by the explosion is less than 1 percent of the total energy produced. However, this supernova which was around 500 times brighter than an average supernova, had radiation levels 5 times higher than a normal supernova.

They believe that in the final times of the star, before the explosion took place, it shed off a massive shell that was made of gas due to the pulsating movement. The reason there was so much energy and light was that after the explosion the debris met with the massive shell of gas causing an even bigger explosion. Essentially, it acted as fuel to the explosion making it even bigger.

The timing of this explosion couldn’t have come at a better time as the scientists were developing new technology for viewing such natural phenomena on telescopes, at the time, enabling them to look back in time and find out about the first stars and how they died.

This will open up a way for scientists to know all about the history of stars, where they come from and look back generations for similar events that have occurred, which will give us more knowledge about our solar system.