It is one thing to theorize about stuff in space or even study incredible images of space thanks to all the telescopes, both off-planet and on, but it is another thing altogether when you can manage to catch an event happening millions of light years away.

Yet this is just NASA has managed to as it caught on video a nova exploding into space.

For those not familiar with what a nova is it is a cataclysmic nuclear explosion in a binary system when one of the stars sucks away too much hydrogen from its partner star. However that star can only hold so much hydrogen before it reaches a critical mass and then completely explodes and then ejects all its excess mass into space.

This video was captured by NASA’s STEREO-B spacecraft while it watched that specific region of space from April 20 to April 24, 2012.

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via io9