Brightest Star Explosion in History Reveals Lonely Supernova

The brightest exploding star ever seen with the naked eye in recorded history apparently experienced a quick and lonely death, a new study reveals. The discovery, which centered on a star explosion witnessed in the year 1006, suggests that many similar outbursts leave no companion star to accompany their demise. The most powerful exploding stars in the universeare supernovas, which are bright enough to momentarily outshine their entire galaxies. One type of star explosion, known as a Type 1a supernova, occurs when one star pours enough fuel onto a dying companion star known as a white dwarf to trigger an extraordinary nuclear explosion. The new study centered its sights on the supernova SN 1006, which was seen all over Earth in the spring of 1006 above the southern horizon of the night sky, in the constellation Lupus, just south of Scorpio. At its peak, researchers say the supernova, which exploded about 7,100 light-years away, was about one-quarter the brightness of the moon, luminous enough that people could have read by its light at midnight