Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2022

34 MARCH-APRIL 2022 ASTRO PUBLISHING I n the not-so-distant past, the dis- covery of a supernova – an explod- ing star – was considered a rare occasion. Today, advanced measur- ing instruments and analysis meth- ods make it possible to detect fifty such explosions on a daily basis, which has also increased the proba- bility that researchers would be able to spot rarer types of explosions that have so far existed only as theoreti- cal constructs. Recently, an international team of scientists, led by researcher Avishay Gal-Yam of the Weizmann Institute’s Particle Physics and Astrophysics De- partment, discovered a supernova that has never been observed be- fore. It is an explosion originating from a Wolf-Rayet star, a type of highly evolved massive star that loses a large amount of mass due to intense stellar winds. The first supernova explosion of a Wolf-Rayet star by IAC - Outreach Unit