An amateur astronomer testing a new camera happens to catch a supernova as it's being born

This lucky find, described this week in the journal Nature, resulted in the first images of the sudden brightening caused by a shock in the star's core — a process that had been theorized but never observed.

"This is the first confirmation of the existence of this phase, which is really in agreement with the models," said lead author Melina Bersten, an astrophysicist at the Instituto de Astrofisica de La Plata in Argentina.

The supernova, SN 2016gkg, could shed fresh light on the end stages of a star's life.

 

  Source : latimes