Watch | NASA releases animation showing exploding star

NASA releases animation depicting the explosion of a super giant star located 1.2 billion light-years away. NASA stated it on it's website that the video was based on the Kepler Space Telescope's observations of a star called “KSN 2011d”. The animation showcases the red super giant star, which is 20 000 times brighter and 500 times bigger than the sun, reaching a point when “the star's internal furnace” could no longer sustain the nuclear fusion in the core of the star and collapsed under gravity. A shockwave or “shock breakout” then rushed upwards from the star's layers in a series of “finger-like plasma jets”.