Brightest supernova ever observed

[marcus]

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/07may_bigsupernova.htm?list45222

"Of all exploding stars ever observed, this was the king", said Alex Filippenko, who leads two of the observation teams involved in the discovery.

The star that exploded was 150 times as massive as the sun.
The explosion occurred in another galaxy, 240 million lightyears away, not in our Milky Way galaxy.

A new explosion-mechanism has been proposed, that applies only to these very massive stars.
By this mechanism, unlike other supernova models, the star can explode BEFORE it has exhausted its fusion fuel

 

[Astronuc]

That dude occurred in 2006, and now they report about it!?

Anyway SN 2006gy is in NGC 1260. See more details on -
http://www.rochesterastronomy.org/sn2006/index.html
It had a maximum brightness around ~14.9.

Now interestingly, there is another bright SN reported this year
SN 2007af was reported in March
http://www.rochesterastronomy.org/supernova.html#2007af
http://www.supernovae.net/sn2007/sn2007af.html
http://www.astrosurf.com/snweb2/2007/07af/07afHome.htm
http://astrosurf.com/blazar/super/SN07/SN2007af.html (light curve of SN2007af)

Need to compare light curves.