SUPERNOVA excitement.

I have posted this picture to the side of this blog for permanency, I don't want to forget this story and have it fall down the page.

Blurbs from the yahoo article are amusing.

"This one is way above anything else," Smith told The Associated Press. "It's really astonishing."
Smith said the star, SN2006gy, "is a special kind of supernova that has never been seen before." He called the star "freakily massive" at 150 times the mass of the sun. (Wha?)
Observations from the Chandra X-ray telescope helped show that it didn't become a black hole like other supernovae and skipped a stage of star death.
Unlike other exploding stars, which peak at brightness for a couple of weeks at most, this supernova, peaked for 70 days, according to NASA. And it has been shining at levels brighter than other supernovae for several months, Smith said.
this star in a distant galaxy does suggest that a similar and relatively nearby star — one 44 quadrillion miles away — might blow in similar fashion any day now or 50,000 years from now, (Well as long as they've got it narrowed down...I bet Washington wishes they could use a timetable like that!)