Astronomers say they've discovered an exploding star, a supernova, far brighter than any seen before.
"This was a truly monstrous explosion, a hundred times more energetic than a typical supernova," said Nathan Smith of the University of California at Berkeley, who led a team of astronomers from California and the University of Texas in Austin.
"That means the star that exploded might have been as massive as a star can get, about 150 times that of our sun. We've never seen that before."
The tantalizing, initial observations of supernova SN 2006gy are being published in the Astrophysical Journal.
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