Some 11.5 million light-years away, the light from this explosion has just reached our telescopes! It’s in the magnitude 11.4 range and promising to get brighter in the next week. Observers in the northern hemisphere will find this object well placed just above the bowl of the Big Dipper asterism in the Messier-82 galaxy, the Cigar Galaxy. The star is an obvious newcomer, residing right in the midst of the galactic edge. Here is our first image from last night (January 22, 2014), 3 minutes through an R photometric filter, 10″ RC, STL-6303 imager at -30C.