This is a current-news question, but hopefully not the sort of one that the rule addresses.
On last night’s news, there was a teaser about “scientists observing the brightest supernova ever seen.” Needless to say, there was nearly nothing more about it, in order to leave time for making sure we know that Anna Nicole is still dead.
Absolutely no further information about it on the news, and I’ve seen nothing on the Internet that appears to be addressing it. Anyone know anything more?
Google news is your friend in this sort of thing… I got some very interesting results just by searching on ‘supernova’ 
One odd bit from this article in the Post Chronicle website…
Um, if it’s 240 million light years away, then it exploded 240 million years ago, guys. Sheesh!!
That IS recently. The universe is around 15 billion years old. 
The NASA press release that the various news stories are based on.
>Um, if it’s 240 million light years away, then it exploded 240 million years ago, guys. Sheesh!!
It is the custom in astronomy to discuss such events with time references that step over the delay for the light getting to us, in part because we can talk about the evolution of a supernova in minutes and hours whereas that time delay could have tens of millions of years of error. An exception is in cosmology where the time delay per se is part of the subject of study.
I assume that “brightest supernova ever seen” is from the media, and not the scientists?
'Cause if we can’t see it with the naked eye in daylight, it’s not.
Well, unless they’re talking absolute magnitude, of course. I don’t know what our chances are of seeing a single supernova with the naked eye when it’s 120 times as distant as the Andromeda Galaxy. :dubious:
The scary thing is that Eta Carinae (7500 light years away) is shedding material in a similar manner to SN 2006gy - if it goes (has gone sometime in the last 7500 years) in a similar fashion, it will be pretty spectacular when we get to see it.
And Astronomers are now looking for dust cloud reflections of historical supernova, giving us a second chance look at supernova we missed.
Si