SPACE - New survey tools unveil two celestial explosions

Developed to help scientists learn more about the complex nature of celestial objects in the universe, astronomical surveys have been cataloguing the night sky since the beginning of the 20th century. The intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF)—led by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)—started searching the skies for certain types of stars and related phenomena in February. Since its inception, iPTF has been extremely successf ...

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-survey-tools-unveil-celestial-explosions.