A close look a the nearest standard candle supernova in several decades
Supernova 2014J in the nearby galaxy M82 -less than 12 million light-years away- exploded on January 14, 2014 and was the closest "standard candle" supernova since (at least) 42 years. An impressive coordinated observational effort orchestrated by the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) team and led by Ariel Goobar from the Oskar Klein Centre at Stockholm University (Goobar et al. 2014, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 784, L12) provides important new clues into the nature of these explosions, as well as the environments where they take place. The proximity of SN2014J allowed the iPTF team to study this important class of stellar explosions, known as Type Ia supernovae, over a very wide wavelength range, starting just hours after the deduced explosion time.