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50 free Supernova trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This supernova trivia quiz covers the most violent thing a star can do. The easy questions handle the basics: what a supernova is, the two ways one can happen, what gets left behind, how bright it can get and roughly how often our galaxy produces one. The harder end goes into the details astronomers argue about: the Chandrasekhar limit, why Type Ia explosions make such good standard candles, the radioactive nickel and cobalt that keep the glow going for months, the naming scheme that produced SN 2021afdx, the 1054 explosion that left the Crab Nebula, Tycho and Kepler's naked-eye stars, the neutrino burst from SN 1987A, the amateur in Argentina who caught a shock breakout, and which nearby stars might be next. Every answer was checked against the supernova encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our astronomy, Milky Way and space quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is a supernova?
A powerful, luminous explosion of a star
For a few weeks its peak brightness can rival an entire galaxy before it fades away.
Q 02Which two kinds of object can a supernova's progenitor collapse into?
A neutron star or a black hole
Alternatively the star is completely destroyed, leaving only a spreading nebula of debris.
Q 03On average, how often is a supernova expected in the Milky Way?
About once every 61 years
Despite that, none has been seen in our galaxy since Kepler's in 1604; dust probably hid a couple since.
Q 04What was the last supernova observed in the Milky Way itself?
Kepler's Star of 1604
Kepler watched it from its peak on 17 October 1604 until it faded from naked-eye view a year later.
Q 05In which satellite galaxy of the Milky Way did SN 1987A explode?
The Large Magellanic Cloud
It was the closest supernova of the telescopic age and was studied in unprecedented detail.
Q 06What kind of star was SN 1987A attributed to?
A blue supergiant
That was a surprise, since red supergiants were expected to be the usual core-collapse progenitors.
Q 07Which two astronomers coined the word 'supernova' in lectures in 1931?
Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky
Knut Lundmark used 'super-Novae' in print in 1933 and may have coined it independently; the hyphen was gone by 1938.
Q 08The Latin word 'nova', from which supernova derives, means what?
New
It refers to what looks like a temporary new star; the 'super-' prefix separates these blasts from far fainter ordinary novae.
Q 09What was the first widely recorded supernova, seen in the constellation Lupus?
SN 1006
Observers in China, Japan, Iraq, Egypt and Europe all described it.
Q 10What did the supernova that Chinese astronomers recorded in AD 1054 leave behind?
The Crab Nebula
A 2021 study made it more likely that this was a rarer kind of collapse from a relatively light star.
Q 11Who observed the supernova of 1572 in Cassiopeia?
Tycho Brahe
Along with the star of 1604, it helped demolish the Aristotelian idea that the heavens beyond the Moon never change.
Q 12Cassiopeia A, a Milky Way supernova remnant from around 1680, is notable for what?
Nobody recorded seeing it explode
Its date was worked out from light echoes; the even younger G1.9+0.3, from the late 19th century, was also missed.
Q 13What was the first supernova observed with a telescope, in 1885?
SN 1885A in the Andromeda Galaxy
Q 21What decides whether a supernova is classified Type I or Type II?
The presence of hydrogen lines in its spectrum
Hydrogen present means Type II; the Balmer series is the tell-tale in visible light.
Q 22A strong ionised silicon absorption line marks which subtype?
Type Ia
Type Ib shows strong neutral helium lines instead, and Type Ic lacks both.
Q 23What does the 'n' stand for in Type IIn?
Narrow
The narrow spectral lines come from ejecta ploughing into a small dense cloud the star shed shortly before dying.
At the time it was thought to be simply an unusually strong nova; the idea of a separate class came in the 1920s.
Q 14Who developed the modern supernova classification scheme, beginning in 1941?
Rudolph Minkowski and Fritz Zwicky
The scheme sorts explosions by their spectra and light curves rather than by what caused them.
Q 15What is the most luminous supernova ever recorded?
ASASSN-15lh
It peaked at 570 billion solar luminosities in 2015, though some argue it was really a star being torn apart by a black hole.
Q 16Amateur astronomer Victor Buso made history in 2016 by catching what for the first time?
The initial shock breakout of a supernova
He was testing a camera from Rosario, Argentina, and the progenitor star was later found in old Hubble images.
Q 17Roughly how many supernovae were astronomers finding each year by the early 2020s?
About two thousand
Most are in distant galaxies; amateurs long played a big role by comparing galaxies against earlier photographs.
Q 18What does the SNEWS project use to give early warning of a Milky Way supernova?
A network of neutrino detectors
The particles race out of the collapsing core hours before the light and are barely absorbed by galactic dust.
Q 19Under the IAU naming convention, what does SN 2003C designate?
The third one reported that year
After Z come pairs of lower-case letters, so the 367th of 2005 was SN 2005nc, and four-letter tags like SN 2021afdx now appear.
Q 20To which body are supernova discoveries reported for naming?
The IAU's Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams
It sends out a circular carrying the assigned name: SN, the year, then letters.
Q 24What feature gives Type II-P supernovae their name?
A plateau in the light curve
The brightness holds roughly steady for months as hydrogen in the ejecta recombines; II-L 'linear' types lack it.
Q 25What kind of star explodes as a Type Ia supernova?
A white dwarf in a binary system
It steals matter from a companion or merges with another white dwarf until runaway carbon fusion blows it apart.
Q 26What is the Chandrasekhar limit, the mass a non-rotating white dwarf approaches before it detonates?
About 1.44 solar masses
In practice carbon fusion ignites within about 1% of the limit, before actual collapse begins.
Q 27Why are Type Ia supernovae so useful to cosmologists?
They serve as standard candles for measuring distance
Their peak absolute magnitude of about -19.3 is remarkably consistent, so their apparent brightness reveals how far away they are.
Q 28Distant supernovae observed in 2003 appeared dimmer than expected. What did this support?
That the expansion of the universe is accelerating
Being fainter than predicted meant they were farther away than a steadily expanding universe would allow.
Q 29Roughly how much brighter than the Sun is a normal Type Ia supernova at peak?
About 5 billion times
That corresponds to an absolute magnitude of about -19.3, with very little variation from one to the next.
Q 30The radioactive decay of which isotope powers a Type Ia light curve?
Nickel-56
It decays to cobalt-56 with a six-day half-life, and the cobalt's slower decay keeps the ejecta glowing for months.