... Tonight's Sky . ... News . ... Star Atlas . ... stars . ... Distant supernovae studied by new method . Technique will revitalize research on this kind of supernovae and will provide astronomers with a much-needed process to probe the deaths of some of the earliest stars in the universe. ... Cooke said that by studying extremely distant supernovae, astronomers would better understand where stars were exploding just after the Big Bang and how stellar properties change as the universe evolved. ...