Star had mass 200 times that of the sun

SOUTH BEND, Ind., Jan. 5 (UPI) -- A distant star dubbed Y-155 had nearly 200 times the mass of our sun when it exploded about seven billion years ago, scientists in Indiana said.

Y-155 is so far away it is a million times fainter than the unaided human eye can detect, University of Notre Dame astronomer Peter Garnavich said in release Tuesday.

The star's center became so hot it triggered a thermonuclear reaction that would have been visible nearly halfway across the universe. At its peak, Y-155 was generating energy at a rate 100 billion times greater than the sun's output.

"If Y-155 had exploded in the Milky Way it would have knocked our socks off," Garnavich said of the star's spectacular explosion.

Garnavich and his team discovered the star in the constellation Cetus, just south of Pisces, during six years of searching that also detected more than 200 weaker stellar explosions.

Y-155 was detected with the Keck telescope in Hawaii, the Magellan telescope in Chile and the MMT telescope in Arizona.