Astronomers have discovered a small, bright object in June 2015. The object, which is likely to be a supernova, is being considered the brightest of its kind ever found. The currently-expected supernova has been named the object ASASSN-15lh and has increased the maximum expected limit of exploding stars capabilities. However, the astronomers believe that in case the object is not a supernova, it is likely to be some even more mysterious object.

The cosmic explosion is some 200 times more powerful as compared to a normal supernova and 20 times brighter as compared to the combined brightness of all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The supernova’s brightness is 570 billion times more than the sun. The All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) detected the supernova around 3.8 billion light-years away. ASAS-SN is an international collaboration with headquarters in Ohio State University and has telescopes across the globe to study the entire sky.

The astronomers examining the object are expecting the explosion of a massive star at the center, possibly a magnetar that is a neutron star having extremely powerful magnetic field capable of intensifying the explosion magnitude. "It proves very challenging for one of the most popular models for the engine of superluminous supernova – the magnetar model – to explain," said lead study author Subo Dong, an astronomer at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University.

The ASASSN-15lh is located in a galaxy that is brighter and bigger than our galaxy. As the object will fade, it is being expected that astronomers will have an improved scope of the locating the object’s core. The position of the object in its host galaxy will become clearer as it fades out. In case it is situated at the galaxy’s center, the object will not be a supernova but a black-hole with abnormal activities.