You are welcome, Raoul, though I am just the messenger in this case.

Monitoring and imaging the sky night after night is anything but a futile task. Those astronomical image plates of yore are priceless now, as they are records of a sky and a Universe that has subtly (and sometimes dramatically) changed forever.

As for the SN, I knew when it was reported to be in M51 that the images would be very interesting, not to mention downright beautiful and inspiring in some cases. It's also a welcome change from most SN images, which are often by nature (literally) of very distant galaxies that appear as barely discernable fuzzy blobs shown in negative, with the SN in question just a big black dot on or near the fuzzy blob. Scientific, but not terribly inspiring.

I also wonder who or what was in the vicinity of that SN in M51? Did they know it was coming and were able to escape the blast area in time? Or did they make it happen, either by accident or for some unknown purpose?

There are probably trillions of intelligent civilizations in the Universe, but it just shows how vast and numerous the Cosmos is that we are still unaware of any of them.