Spectacular ‘galactic super volcano explosion’ captured

The resulting explosion then blasted through the “massive” Messier 87 (M87) galaxy more than 50 million light years away,‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported.

A light year is the equivalent of 5.9 trillion miles.

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.

This hot gas then rises up in the atmosphere,dragging the dark ash with it.

“This process can be seen in a movie of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano where the shock waves propagating in the smoke are followed by the rise of dark ash clouds into the atmosphere,” a NASA spokesperson was quoted as saying.

He added: “In the analogy with Eyjafjallajokull,the energetic particles produced in the vicinity of the black hole rise through X-ray emitting atmosphere of the cluster,lifting up the coolest gas near the centre of M87 in their wake.

“This is similar to the hot volcanic gases drag up the clouds of dark ash. And just like the volcano here on Earth,shock waves can be seen when the black hole pumps energetic particles into the cluster gas.” Astronomers say the black hole powered the “galactic super volcano” and prevented hundreds of millions of new stars from being formed. They claim normally such stars would form in the galaxy when “superheated” gas cooled but this blast interrupted that process.