Last July, a supernova in NGC 7331 was discovered by GOTO) and assigned the name SN 2025rbs. It was a type 1a supernova (caused by an exploding white dwarf) and ended up being the brightest supernova discovered that year, easily visible in fairly small telescopes.
Early in September, another supernova (SN 2026aaiv) was discovered in the same galaxy by ATLAS, and it's also a type 1a. This is exciting for a lot of reasons, firstly it means we have another bright, nearby, supernova which is easy to observe, both visually and photographically.
Scientifically it's exciting because type 1a supernovae allow us to measure how far away distant galaxies our, which makes them key to our understanding of the size and expansion of the universe. There's still a lot we don't know about them, and having data on two of them in the same galaxy (called supernova siblings) helps us calibrate out the effect of the host galaxy and learn more about how the very local environment of the supernova affects its properties.
Both of these images were taken by me using a pair of robotic telescopes called gotito and TWIST, which are next to the northern hemisphere node of GOTO.
Supernovae like this take a few weeks after explosion to reach maximum brightness, which is around now, and then fade slowly over a few months so there is plenty of time to observe it yourself.
https://preview.redd.it/pzu00wwcnaph1.jpg?width=3227&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=752dad7a20f4e5406a4532ca5cf3bff699701f33
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