In July 2006, ESO's Very Large Telescope took an image of a new supernova in galaxy NGC 1288. The supernova, SN 2006dr, was at its peak brightness, shining as bright as the entire galaxy itself, demonstrating the amount of energy released. In this image, the supernova is the bright object to the left of the center of the galaxy.

NGC 1288 is a spiral galaxy, seen almost face-on from Earth, and showing multiple spiral arms extending from the centre. It is located 200 million light-years away from our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

An amateur astronomer, Berto Monard, first spotted the supernova. On the night of July 17, 2006, Monard used his 30-cm telescope in the suburbs of Pretoria in South Africa, and discovered the supernova as an apparent 'new star' close to the center of NGC 1288, later designated SN 2006dr. The supernova reached magnitude 16, or about 10 000 times fainter than what can be seen by the unaided eye.

Using spectra obtained with the Keck telescope on 26 July 2006, astronomers from the University of California found SN 2006dr to be a Type Ia supernova that expelled material with speeds up to 10 000 km/s.

--ESO and SPACE.com Staff

Credit: Henri Boffin (ESO)