Researchers have finally witnessed, in visible light wavelengths, the “shock breakout” of a supernova—the exact moment when the expanding blast wave from a vanishing star lastly explodes the outer stellar layers and makes its outstanding entry onto the cosmic stage. The recent supernova results signify the proverbial needle in a haystack—an international group of researcher examined 3 years’ worth of data, in which Kepler taken pictures every other 30 minutes of some 50 trillion stars dispersed amid 500 remote galaxies.

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5 March 2015

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have, for the first time, spotted four images of a distant exploding star. The images are arranged in a cross-shaped pattern by the powerful gravity of a foreground galaxy embedded in a massive cluster of galaxies. The supernova discovery paper will appear on 6 March 2015 in a special issue of Science celebrating the centenary of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

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