How to blow up a massive star

Supernovae have a peculiar place in the history of astronomy. They are the only transient phenomena in the sky outside the solar system with a documented history of observations by the naked eye for almost two millennia: prominent examples include the supernova of 1054 that made the Crab Nebula, and those of 1572 and 1604 – now named after Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler – which shook the medieval belief in an immutable celestial sphere. Yet it was not until the 20th century that we began to grasp their true nature and realized – starting with the work of Baade & Zwicky (1934b) – that they are violent stellar explosions.