A Galaxy

As Dr. Soran, the bad guy in the movie Star Trek: Generations, found out, blowing up a star sometimes takes a few tries. Such was also the case for an object called SN 2009ip. It's a star in a galaxy about 80 million light-years away. Or, rather, it was a star. It first drew attention in 2009, when it [flared:failed] up [brightly:importantly] in an apparent supernova - a star exploding at the end of its life. But it was soon unmasked as a supernova impostor - a nonfatal outburst from a [massive:super] star that only looks like a full-blown supernova. Following two subsequent flare-ups, astronomers have now [concluded:described] that SN 2009ip has gone supernova at last. During a 2012 outburst, the star brightened much more than usual, [becoming:being] a billion times as luminous as the sun. And spectroscopic measurements revealed that gas was racing outward at roughly 8,000 kilometers per second.