Around the year 1900, as astronomers on Earth were refining photographic plates and cataloging stars through visual refractors, a star died near the heart of the Milky Way.
It was not a subtle death. A white dwarf star in a binary system exceeded its structural limits and detonated in a thermonuclear Type Ia explosion. The blast unleashed an incomprehensible quantity of energy, hurling heavy elements outward at thousands of kilometers per second.
Yet, if you look through historical astronomical journals from 1900, you will find no mention of it. No visual observer pointed a refractor at Sagittarius and saw a brilliant new star flare into naked-eye visibility. The event passed in complete silence.
How could the youngest supernova in our entire galaxy go completely unnoticed?
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