The brightest kind of supernova spotted just 11 hours after it exploded... the best for decades

The brightest kind of supernova spotted just 11 hours after it exploded... the best for decades

Supernovae are bright, so bright they can sometimes be seen with the naked eye, despite being hundreds of thousands of light years away.

Now astronomers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California have caught radiation from the brightest category of supernova – the type Ia – just 11 hours after it exploded.

Called SN 2011fe, it was seen in the Pinwheel Galaxy 21million light years away. Not since 1986 has a type Ia been spotted this close to Earth.

The light from thousands of type Ia's have been studied, but until now their physics - how they detonate and what the star systems that produce them actually look like before they explode - has been educated guesswork. Read More