Space telescope catches star's supernova explosion

Nasa's Kepler space telescope has seen the supernova explosion of a star 1.2 billion light years away from earth.

The star was a 'red supergiant', and was 500 times bigger and 20,000 brighter than our Sun.

This animation shows what the flash of an exploding star's shockwave, which astronomers call the "shock breakout", looks like.