New survey tools unveil 2 celestial explosions

A team of researchers including Carnegie's Mansi Kasliwal and John Mulchaey used a novel astronomical survey software system -- the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) -- to link a new stripped-envelope supernova, named iPTF13bvn, to the star from which it exploded. The iPTF team also pinpointed the first afterglow of an explosion called a gamma-ray burst that was found by the Fermi satellite.