One thing that is pretty cool about some of the big efforts in astronomy is that sometimes, in the process of searching for something, something else gets observed.

Here's one interesting case: The SuperMACHO survey has instruments watching a large part of the LMC looking for micro lensing events to get statistical information about small relatively dark objects drifting around our galaxy. These are observed by seeing small rises and falls in the brightness of stars in the LMC over a period of a few days to a few weeks as a lensing body passes in front of it; so that part of the sky is observed and analysed very frequently.

But there are other events in the system that can trigger false-alerts. Eleven of these in this survey so far were type 1a supernovae (used as cosmological standard candles) from galaxies far behind the LMC, and the way this survey works, we now have data on the light curves of these objects (out to z=0.35) from well before maximum. This will help us refine our knowledge of the variations in these 'standard candles'.

For more details see this paper.

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