For an amateur. C-14?

How does a supernova search progam work?

Supernova, espcially in other galaxies, seem to have lost their luster in popular publications.

Remember this? TIME MAGAZINE 1987

While scanning some routine sky photographs at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile last week, Astronomer Ian Shelton felt a surge of excitement. In an exposure he had taken just hours before with one of the observatory's small telescopes was a bright spot that had not appeared in older pictures. Stepping out into the clear mountain air of the Chilean coastal range, the University of Toronto scientist reverted to a technique now used only rarely by professional stargazers: he looked up at the sky. There, in the fuzzy patch of light known as the Large Magellanic Cloud, was the spot...

I thought there was a local supernova about two years prior to this that made the covers of several popular magazines but I couldn't find it.