Astronomers spot most powerful supernova

The biggest star explosion ever recorded is 10 times more powerful than a normal supernova and about 500 times as bright, scientists in the UK and US say in newly-published research.

The astronomers from Birmingham University in Britain and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the US described their discovery - dubbed SN2016aps - as an "extremely energetic supernova from a very massive star".

As well as its size and brightness, it was "spectacular" in other properties as well, said co-author Edo Berger.

Such supernovas only emit 1.0 per cent of their energy in visible light, but SN2016aps emits a far greater proportion.

SN2016aps is estimated to contain the energy equivalent to a record 200 trillion trillion gigatons of TNT.

Due to the unusually high amount of hydrogen contained in the explosive cloud, the astronomers believe that the supernova was originally formed from the merging together of two suns.

Scientists hope that the discovery of SN2016aps will lead to the detection other similar supernova and help look back to conditions in the early universe.