Sorry for the bump, but
this is really cool stuff.
The gist is that this supernova was caught nearly at the point of explosion, which is extremely improbable. This being said, astronomers can now study the "unexploded bits" of the star that get ejected first, before the star really gets big and bright. This has never been done before, nor have we as a society ever had the tools to do it properly, as we do now (Hubble, Keck, etc.). They are expecting the star to be visible with a good pair of binoculars (and a dark sky, naturally) in about a week. An increase in brightness of about 4-5 magnitudes.