Just how powerful is a supernova? We asked Senior Staff Scientist Peter Nugent of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to give us some perspective on the energy output of these dying stars.

"This is a violent explosion. I mean the light from a super nova for a month or so totals the entire light from the billion plus stars that are in the galaxy that it comes from. So that’s how bright it is. It rivals all the other stars in the galaxy. A typical, this super nova that went off, basically if you took the entire energy output of our sun over its 10 billion year lifetime this super nova let it out within one month."

Nugent’s team is still tracking a supernova that exploded last year. He says that they are powerful enough to follow for several years.

"The explosion takes place and we can follow the super nova for several years. But they continue to expand for 10, 20, 30,000 years until they’re so weak and spread out that they just mingle in with the other gas in the galaxy."