Chornock and colleagues observed such a glow in May 2010 through a telescope mounted on Mount Haleakala in Hawaii, as well as a NASA satellite. Their report in the journal Nature describes the flare brightened to a peak that July, before fading away over the course of a year.

Via jwz. Super interesting.

A long-standing mystery about how dying stars spew out the material of future planets is now solved, scientists say.

Doing the math we conclude it will take 1.7 x 10^20 years for our sun to generate the same amount of energy as a cubic light year of cheese.