Scientists using the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea have devised a method to detect the shape of supernovas, brilliant explosions of stars heavier than eight suns.

Despite their brilliance, the underlying process had been little understood. And their shape has remained a mystery because they are typically hundreds of millions of light-years away; they look like a point.

But theorists have argued that they either are "bipolar" — like a bow tie with a large knot, or clumpy like a cauliflower.

A team of Japanese astronomers studying the polarization of the light from supernovae determined that the clumpy shape is common, the observatory reported online Thursday.