IAU: supernova cake
Oh goodness, I'm disappointed I missed this. Scroll down to the last item. It recounts how, last week, cake was served to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of a supernova that went off in 1006 AD, the brightest in recorded history. I love cake. And this one had a picture of a supernova remnant in icing. How briliant!
But, obviously, there's more to SN1006 than cake (consumed in less than 1000 seconds, according to the report). Wikipedia provides a brief account here. The supernova was also the inspiration for a two day discussion meeting "Supernovae: one millennium after SN1006" at the IAU General Assembly.
Before the meeting, I asked one of the session organisers, Wolfgang Hillebrandt of the Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany why people were still interested in something that happened so long ago. Was there really anything left to learn? He said that astronomers were looking for the companion star that triggered SN1006 to explode, but didn't think that anyone had found it. "I don’t think there is anything close to being published," he said.
Unfortunately, I can't give you an update from the session, because I was still slaving in Nature's London office when it was taking place on 17-18 August. The program, if you want to check it for yourself, is here.