SN 2003fg

Coordinates: 14^h 16^m 18^s, +52° 14′ 00″

SN 2003fg, sometimes called the "Champagne Supernova", was an unusual Type Ia supernova. It was discovered in 2003 with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and the Keck Telescope, both on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and announced by researchers at the University of Toronto. The supernova occurred in a galaxy some 4 billion light-years from Earth. It was nicknamed after the 1996 song "Champagne Supernova" by English rock band Oasis.

It was unusual because of the mass of its progenitor. According to the current understanding, white dwarf stars explode as Type Ia supernovas when their mass approaches 1.4 solar masses, termed the Chandrasekhar limit. The mass added to the star is believed to be donated by a companion star, either from the companion's stellar wind or the overflow of its Roche lobe as it evolves.

However, the progenitor of SN 2003fg reached two solar masses before exploding. The primary mechanism invoked to explain how a white dwarf can exceed the Chandrasekhar mass is unusually rapid rotation; the added support effectively increases the critical mass. An alternative explanation is that the explosion resulted from the merger of two white dwarfs. The evidence indicating a higher than normal mass comes from the light curve and spectra of the supernova—while it was particularly overluminous, the kinetic energies measured from the spectra appeared smaller than usual. One proposed explanation is that more of the total kinetic energy budget was expended climbing out of the deeper than usual potential well.