In a paper to appear in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers led by OSU graduate student Ben Shapee describe observations of recent supernova 2011fe that they captured with the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) using a tool created at Ohio State University: the Multi-Object Double Spectrograph (MODS).

MODS measures the frequencies and intensities of light shining from a star. Stars shine at different frequencies depending on the chemical elements they are made of; a star like the sun, which is made mostly of hydrogen, shines at different frequencies than a star that is made mostly of helium. So astronomers can use spectra to determine what a particular star is made of.

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