Bryson Chapter #3

Quote- "'There's something satisfying, I think,' Evans said, 'about the ides of light traveling for millions of years through space and just at the right moment as it reaches Earth someone looks at the right bit of sky and sees it. It just seems right that an event of that magnitude should be witnessed.'"

Questions- Why does it say in the chapter that a supernova occurs on average once every 2-3 hundred years but It says that Evans, from 1980-1996, averaged two discoveries a year?
How does a supernova look like? How do they look like to Evans with his sixteen-inch telescope?

Comment- I thought supernovae are really interesting. Like it says in the chapter, "Supernovae occur when a giant star, one much bigger than our own Sun, collapses and then spectacularly explodes, releasing in an instant the energy of a hundred billion suns, burning for a time brighter than all the stars in its galaxy." We are able to see the Sun, but we are not able to see supernovae, which are a lot bigger than our Sun. I think it is so amazing how we are not able to see up in the sky an event so big and so bright as a supernova. I understand that they don't happen that often, "In a typical galaxy....a supernova will occur on average once every two or three hundred years," but I think it is interesting how we are not able to see it when they do happen. I think this also connects to how, as it said in the chapter, only about 2,000 stars can be seen from any one spot while just with a small two-inch telescope that number rises to 300,000 stars! That is why Evans is able to see what he sees with his sixteen-inch telescope. As it said in the chapter, it is surprising how  "little of the universe is visible to us when we incline our heads to the sky." I think this is kind of disappointing because there are so many amazing things out there in the universe, that we are unable to see without a telescope. But even with people who have a telescope it is not that easy to find a supernova. As it said in the chapter, "Finding a supernova therefore was a little bit like standing on the observation platform of the Empire State Building with a telescope and searching windows around Manhattan in the hope of finding, let us say, someone lighting a twenty-first-birthday cake."