Watch the moment a star brightly 'self-detonates' in NASA video

A star brightly 'self-detonating' has been captured by NASA's Hubble Telescope and a time-lapse video shows what happens over the course of a year as it eventually fades into nothing.

In Galaxy NG2525, located nearly 70 million light-years away from Earth, a star unleashed as much energy in a matter of days as what our Sun does in several billion years.

A time-lapse video shows it appearing as an incredibly bright star on the outer edge of the galaxy's spiral arms, outshining even the very brightest stars in the galaxy, before eventually fading out of sight.

Hubble astronomers were using the supernova as part of a program to precisely measure the expansion rate of the universe, according to a release from NASA.

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The type of supernova seen in the sequence originated from a burned-out star - a white dwarf located in a close binary system - that is accreting material from its companion star.

When the white dwarf reaches a critical mass, its core becomes hot enough to ignite nuclear fusion, turning it into a giant atomic bomb.

This thermonuclear runaway process tears the dwarf apart. The opulence is short-lived as the fireball fades away.

Because supernovae of this type all peak at the same brightness, they are known as 'standard candles', which basically act as cosmic tape measures.

Knowing the actual brightness of the supernova and observing its brightness in the sky, astronomers can calculate the distances of their host galaxies which allows astronomers to measure the expansion rate of the universe.

The time-lapse was recorded between February 2018 and February 2019.

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