SALT part of urgent global observation campaign for a new supernova

The Karoo-based Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) has played a significant role in an urgent international collaboration to monitor a rarely observed phenomenon: the actual start and development of a supernova explosion. It started in March, when the Chinese-European Einstein Probe X-ray space telescope detected a brief flash of soft (lower energy) X-rays, from a galaxy some 500-million light-years distant (this flash was designated EP260321a). A global monitoring campaign was immediately implemented – ground-based telescopes started their observations of EP260321a within an hour of its discovery. These established that the phenomenon was a supernova, subsequently designated SN 2026gzf, that was brightening rapidly.

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