Last year, a spectacular event was recorded – something that scientists were calling “the brightest supernova ever”. Although the suspected supernova (the explosion of a star as it dies) actually occurred 2.8 billion years ago, the event in the southern constellation of Indus was documented in June 2015 by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) network, a group of four automated 14cm telescopes that search for exploding stars.
The occurrence – named ASASSN-15lh – was over 500 billion times brighter than our Sun, and outshone the entire Milky Way 20 times over. Krzysztof Stanek, co-principal investigator of the ASASSN network, told the New Scientist “this is really on steroids, and then some”, adding that if such a supernova had occurred in our galaxy, there would be no night.
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