The mirror of the Liverpool Telescope is only 6.5ft (2 metres) in diameter but, by studying the polarisation, the astronomers were able to reconstruct the shape of the explosion as if the telescope had a diameter of 388 miles (625 kilometres). The experts used the data to reconstruct the 3D shape of the explosion, allowing them to map the edges of the blast to see just how flat it was. This enabled them to see that it resembled an extremely flat disc and was about the size of our own solar system, only in a galaxy 180 million light-years away. They used the Liverpool Telescope, which is located on La Palma, in the Canary Islands, to analyse the light and therefore measure the shape of the explosion. The University of Sheffield scientists made their discovery after spotting a flash of a specific wave of light called polarised light completely by chance. 'What we now know for sure is that the levels of asymmetry recorded are a key part of understanding these mysterious explosions, and it challenges our preconceptions of how stars might explode in the universe.' He added: 'There are a few potential explanations for it: the stars involved may have created a disc just before they died, or these could be failed supernovas, where the core of the star collapses to a black hole or neutron star which then eats the rest of the star. 'Hopefully, this new finding will help us shed a bit more light on them – we never thought that explosions could be this aspherical.' 'Put simply, they are weird, and this new observation makes them even weirder. 'Very little is known about FBOT explosions - they just don't behave like exploding stars should, they are too bright and they evolve too quickly,' said lead author Dr Justyn Maund, from the University of Sheffield's Department of Physics and Astronomy. One potential explanation for how the blast occurred is that the star itself may have been surrounded by a dense disk, or it may have been a failed supernova - the massive explosion that takes place at the end of the life of some stars.

While scientists do not know how these mysterious FBOT explosions occur, the authors of the new University of Sheffield study believe their discovery has helped solve part of the puzzle. It had previously been suggested that the explosion was either a newly-formed black hole in the process of accreting matter, or the frenetic rotation of a neutron star, but experts now believe it to have been an FBOT.

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