ON 22 September last year, the website of The Astronomer's Telegram alerted researchers to a supernova explosion in a spiral galaxy about 84 million light years away. There was just one problem. The same object, SN 2009ip, had blown up in a similarly spectacular fashion just weeks earlier. Such stars shouldn't go supernova twice, let alone in quick succession. The thing was, it wasn't the only one, the next year another supernova, SN 2010mc, did the same.