The famous Hubble Space Telescope has captured the images of two supernovae, the second event in the same galaxy in as many years.

Stars are powered by nuclear fusion of small atoms to produce larger ones, releasing large amounts of energy. When a star can no longer carry out nuclear fusion, it ‘dies’. Supernovae are gigantic stellar explosions which can be produced in one of two ways: the ‘reigniting’ of an old star which restarts nuclear fusion, or the death and collapse of a massive star.

Both of the two supernovae observed by Hubble are of the latter type, having been produced by giant stars which lost their outer layers of hydrogen and collapsed in on themselves.

The snappily named SN 2012im and SN 2013ek both occurred in the equally catchy NGC 6984 galaxy. This was a surprise, and some scientists have reasoned that the 2013 supernova was merely a repeated flare up of that spotted in 2012.

However it has since been confirmed that the two were separate events, something incredibly unlikely if they were entirely independent. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has not played host to a single supernova for around 140 years. Scientists now believe the two supernovae in NGC 6984 are likely to be related to each other in some unknown way.

Supernovae are both the universe’s most destructive and creative phenomena, reaching around one hundred billion degrees and producing a shockwave travelling at ten per cent of the speed of light, forcing nearby gas molecules together.

These molecules can then begin to coalesce via nuclear fusion and thereby create a new star. There is a certain beauty in this cosmic symmetry

Not only can supernovae grant life to new stars, but the human race itself, and indeed all life on Earth, is also a product of these stellar explosions. It takes the truly incredible temperatures generated inside of massive stars to create elements such as iron, which are flung across the universe when the star dies. It is these elements which make up the core of our planet. Without supernovae, we wouldn’t have a home.

All in all, if you’re a star reaching the end of the road, creating a few more of your own kind and knocking together some planets as a bonus isn’t such a bad way to go.