A star is dead. On Sept. 20, 2016, Victor Buso, an amateur astronomer in Rosario, Argentina, was checking out the new camera on his telescope by taking pictures of a nearby spiral galaxy when a star within it went off in a supernova explosion. It was a rare instance in which astronomers were able to see the beginning of a supernova, when one of the most massive stars in the universe ends its life in one of the most violent events nature can cook up. Most supernovas are far away and don’t call attention to themselves until their funeral pyre explosions are well underway. “It’s like winning the cosmic lottery,” said Alex Filippenko, in a news release from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, where Dr. Filippenko, of the University of California, Berkeley, has been tracking the supernova.

Source: New York Times February 21, 2018 19:01 UTC