super volcanic explosion

LONDON: A spectacular "super volcano" that erupted trillions of miles away from earth has been clicked by a NASA telescope.

The staggering eruption was filmed by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array.

Astronomers said shock waves between a giant black hole and cooling gas, caused the mind boggling explosion, reports the Telegraph.

The explosion then blasted through the "massive" Messier 87 galaxy more than 50 million light years away. One light year is the equivalent of 5.9 trillion miles.

Researchers said the black hole powered the "galactic super-volcano" and prevented hundreds of millions of new stars from being formed.

They said that normally such stars would form in the galaxy when "superheated" gas cooled but this particular blast interrupted that process.

Nasa said the cosmic "eruption" was very similar to the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, which shot plumes of ash and smoke into the atmosphere and caused chaos for world travel earlier this year.

"With Eyjafjallajokull, pockets of hot gas blasted through the surface of the lava, generating shock waves that can be seen passing through the grey smoke of the volcano," a NASA spokesperson said.