The international team of scientists managed to observe the explosion of the same supernova in four sectors of the celestial sphere. This became possible thanks to the method of gravitational lensing, according to the National Laboratory named after Lawrence in Berkeley.

Supernova iPTF16geu (SN 2016geu) is located at a distance of four billion light years from Earth.

The star belongs to the rare subcategory of supernovae Ia, which are formed as a result of the explosion of white dwarfs. As the researchers emphasize, this type of star belongs to one of the 50 thousand supernovae.

Earlier it was reported that scientists have discovered the brightest supernova in the universe. ASASSN-15lh is twice as bright as the previously fixed maximum for supernovae, thousands of times brighter than the "normal" supernovae and 50 times brighter than our Milky Way galaxy.