A fully automated process, including a brand-new artificial intelligence (AI) tool, has successfully detected, identified and classified its first supernova. Not only does this rapidly accelerate the process of analyzing and classifying new supernova candidates, it also bypasses human error.
We're way beyond the days where astronomers peered through eyepieces in the middle of the night or spent all day putting photographic plates into a blink comparator to flick back and forth for months on end. I'm sure there are no professional astronomers - and certainly no astrophysicists - who are unhappy to have computers helping them with the tedious work of finding the little speck of light that just turned on among the hundred billion other little specks of light.
The exciting part comes later, once that new information leads to new understanding.