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Observations of a nearby type I superluminous supernova showing oscillating light-curve bumps provide evidence of a centrally located magnetar in the wake of the explosion, surrounded by an infalling accretion disk undergoing Lense–Thirring precession.

Observations of optical flares from AT2022tsd (the ‘Tasmanian Devil’) show that they have durations on the timescale of minutes, occur over a period of months, are highly energetic, are probably nonthermal and have supernova luminosities.

Archival images of the progenitor system of supernova SN 2011fe are so sensitive that the presence of luminous red giants or most helium stars is directly ruled out.

Observations of SN 2021yfj reveal that its progenitor is a massive star stripped down to its O/Si/S core, which remarkably continued to expel vast quantities of silicon-, sulfur-, and argon-rich material before the explosion, informing us that current theories for how stars evolve are too narrow.

Modelling the spectra and light curve of supernova SN 2006aj shows that it had a much smaller explosion energy and ejected much less mass than other gamma-ray burst–supernovae, suggesting that it was produced by a star whose initial mass was only ∼20 solar masses, and which left behind a neutron star, rather than a black hole.

Multi-instrument detection of a nearby type 1a supernova shows that the exploding star was probably a carbon–oxygen white dwarf star in a binary system with a main-sequence companion.

A very uncommon detached binary system with a 20.5-min orbital period has been discovered to harbour a carbon–oxygen white dwarf star and a low-mass subdwarf B star with a seven-Earth radius that traces the theoretical limit of binary evolution predicted 20 years ago.

Superluminous supernova SN 2017egm has a complex light curve that is well modelled by successive collisions of a shockwave with dense circumstellar shells ejected by its massive progenitor star during the pair-instability pulsation stage. Such a scenario might be responsible for providing a power source for superluminous supernovae in general.

Multi-epoch spectropolarimetry of a supernova reveals the abrupt appearance of significant polarization when the inner core is first exposed in the thinning ejecta — roughly 90 days after explosion.

The early stages of a lensed supernova at redshift 3 are found in images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, with observations beginning from around 5.8 hours after the explosion.

An individual star at z = 1.49 is gravitationally lensed and highly magnified by a foreground galaxy cluster. Fluctuations in the star’s emission provide insight on the mass function of intracluster stars, compact objects and the presence of dark-matter subhaloes.

Blue large-amplitude pulsators (BLAPs) represent a mysterious class of hot stars pulsating in an unexpectedly extreme way. Here we report the discovery of an unusual BLAP at a short-lived phase that provides a new path to understand their physical origins.

The JWST, with the aid of gravitational lensing, confirms the extreme distance of an ultra-faint galaxy at a redshift of 9.79, showing it to have a luminosity typical of the sources responsible for cosmic reionization and highly compact and complex morphology.

Electron-capture supernovae are thought to come from progenitors with a narrow range of masses, and thus they are rare. Here the authors present six indicators of an electron-capture supernova origin, and find that supernova 2018zd fulfils all six criteria.

Observations of an event (several energetic eruptions leading to a terminal explosion that is surprisingly hydrogen-rich) with the spectrum of a supernova do not match with other observations of supernovae.

The explosion of a type Ia supernova could be triggered either by accretion from a companion—which should be indicated by brightening caused by interaction of supernova ejecta with the companion—or by a merger with a white dwarf or other small star; here observations by the Kepler mission of three type Ia supernovae reveal no such brightening, leading to the conclusion that they were triggered by a merger.