Supernova

The tilted spiral galaxy NGC 7331 with a golden central bulge, blue-white spiral arms and dark dust lanes, three smaller background galaxies scattered across the star field above it
Celestial event

SN 2026aaiv: a Type Ia supernova is brightening in NGC 7331, and how to see it

A white dwarf in the galaxy NGC 7331 tore itself apart in a thermonuclear explosion, and the light is only now reaching us, bright enough to catch in a backyard telescope. SN 2026aaiv is a Type Ia supernova in a spiral galaxy in Pegasus, about 44 million light-years away, and it’s still brightening. The ATLAS survey flagged it on September 1; by September 11 it had climbed to roughly magnitude 13.8, and observers expect a peak near 11th to 12th magnitude within a week or two. Pegasus rides almost overhead from 35°N around midnight this month, so from Cyprus the timing and the geometry both line up. If you own a telescope or a smart scope, the next couple of weeks are the window. ...

September 12, 2026 · 8 min · Andreas Ioannou
The Hubble Space Telescope image of Type Ia supernova SN 1994D, a bright point at the lower-left edge of the galaxy NGC 4526, shown to illustrate how a single exploding star can rival its host galaxy in brightness.
Space science

The first light of a supernova: catching a shock breakout in X-rays

On 21 March 2026, an X-ray telescope in orbit registered a faint flash from a galaxy about 500 million light-years away. It lasted roughly seven minutes and then faded. That flash was the first light of a supernova — not the slow brightening you normally see over weeks, but the instant the explosion’s shock wave punched through the surface of the star. Astronomers call it a shock breakout, and this is only the second time in about two decades one has been caught cleanly in X-rays. ...

August 7, 2026 · 6 min · Andreas Ioannou