The year 2006 marks the 1000th anniversary of the supernova of 1006 C.E., the brightest supernova in all of recorded human history. This is also a time of great excitement in the supernova community: Observations from space observatories including Hubble, Chandra, XMM-Newton, and Spitzer, together with ones from powerful new ground-based telescopes and instruments, are revealing supernova remnants in the Galaxy and beyond in unprecedented detail. Fully three-dimensional computational codes and simulations running on powerful new machines are providing insight into the physics of supernovae freed from the simplifying assumptions that have restricted past understanding. Automated supernova searches are discovering hundreds of new supernovae every year, some at redshifts of 1 or beyond. And supernovae have revolutionized cosmology through the discovery of an accelerating universe, and they hold promise for deepening our understanding of the ‘dark energy’ that drives the acceleration.

We review some of the extensive historical observations of SN 1006, emphasizing estimates of its brightness at maximum. An estimate of Vmax ≈ −7.5 is consistent with what may be the most reasonable interpretation of these records and with an a posteriori calculation based on typical peak magnitudes for Type Ia supernovae together with the distance and extinction to SN 1006. We also give a brief overview of the discovery of the SN 1006 remnant in 1965, and contrast the earliest radio, optical, and X-ray observations of the remnant with recent ones, as reported in more detail by other papers in this JD09 review.

We present results on the SMC from the first full season of the Michigan/CTIO Magellanic Cloud Emission-Line Survey, being carried out from CTIO. Images are being obtained in Hα, [S II] λλ 6717, 6731, and [O III] λ 5007, plus red and green continuum bands for star subtraction. Data from the 1996–97 season have been assembled into large mosaic images which reveal the rich variety of nebulosity in the SMC in unprecedented detail. These are providing definitive samples of the active, occasionally violent, ISM on scales including superbubbles, wind-blown bubbles, supernova remnants, H II regions, and planetary nebulae.

We have measured proper motions for fast, oxygen-rich knots in Puppis A, which we demonstrate are probably uncontaminated ejecta from the progenitor star’s core. Typical fast knots show motions of 0.1-0.2 arcsec yr-1 diverging from a point 4’ northeast of the center of the radio shell. A model assuming constant expansion fits the data well and gives an age of 3700 ± 300 yr for Puppis A. We also present new spectra which indicate the presence of neon along with oxygen in the fast knots.

Existing catalogues of supernova remnants (SNRs) in external galaxies are very incomplete. Potentially however, such samples are of great importance in understanding SNRs, since the distances to objects in a given sample are essentially the same and since absorption is small (compared to galactic SNRs). We have recently obtained Hα+[NII], Hβ, [SII], [OIII], and 6100 Å continuum CCD images of nine selected areas in M33 using the KPNO 4m. In addition to the six SNRs already known to exist in the fields we have surveyed, we have identified 21 other nebulae with [SII]:Hα+[NII] ratios which may be SNRs. Spectra of seven of these nebulae were obtained subsequently and show that the majority are indeed SNRs. A more detailed analysis of regions containing significant HII region contamination and a search for very small diameter remnants is currently underway.