Wide-field view of the sky around Nova Vul 1670

This wide-field view shows the sky around the location of the historical exploding star Nova Vul 1670. The remains of the nova are only very faintly visible at the centre of this picture.

New observations made with APEX and other telescopes have now revealed that the star that European astronomers saw was not a nova, but a much rarer, violent breed of stellar collision. It was spectacular enough to be easily seen with the naked eye during its first outburst, but the traces it left were so faint that very careful analysis using submillimetre telescopes was needed before the mystery could finally be unravelled more than 340 years later.