a star's dying scream, briefly outshining an entire galaxy of company.
means the catastrophic explosion of a star at the end of its life, releasing more energy in seconds than the sun will in its lifetime.
from from latin nova meaning new, since ancient astronomers thought a sudden bright star was being born, not dying; super was tacked on in the 1930s by fritz zwicky and walter baade to mark how much brighter these were than ordinary novae.
sn 1054 — chinese astronomers recorded it, it formed the crab nebula
sn 1987a — nearest visible supernova since telescopes existed, seen in 1987
tycho's supernova — observed in 1572, upended aristotle's unchanging heavens
betelgeuse — a red supergiant expected to go supernova any time in the next 100,000 years