Don Neill, an astrophysicist at Caltech involving with gathering the original data, added: ”It’s like catching sight of a baby when it first walks. If you blink, you might miss it.”
The stellar collision spewed almost unimaginable quantities hot debris into deep space.
And as the debris blasted out, they triggered a shock wave so violent it super-heated hydrogen molecules in the debris cloud, producing the ultraviolet emissions observed in 2004.
The researchers also used archived data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope in conjunction with the Wide-field Survey Explorer.
source: express.co.uk