And while astronomers believe they have a relatively good understanding about how and why these stellar explosions occur, supernova iPTF14hls — discovered in 2014 — just doesn't fit. "I was really, really not expecting what we saw," he told CBC News. These two images show the location of supernova iPTF14hls in 1954 and the absence of the supernova in 1993. Arcavi said the ability to monitor the sky continuously — something that wasn't possible in the past — helped them discover this strange supernova. "It has these two aspects, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde supernova that on the one hand is so weird and unpredictable, and on the other hand just has this textbook vanilla supernova spectrum, and we really don't know how to reconcile those two sides of it."

Source: CBC News November 08, 2017 18:00 UTC