Astronomers have discovered the brightest supernova in a decade, an exploding star as bright as 200 million suns. Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki discovered the supernova on July

31 with a small telescope. Astronomers subsequently turned the Hubble Space Telescope toward the star, 11 million light-years from Earth on the fringes of a galaxy called NGC 2403. The

supernova is nestled in a cluster of massive bright blue stars 14 million years old and probably has about 15 times the mass of our sun. MORE TO READ