Type Ia supernovae are the luminous deaths of small incredibly dense stars called white dwarfs. They are the main producers of the element, iron, in the Universe that are produced during the hot dense explosions that mark the ends of their lives. They are also essential for understanding the make-up of our Universe and were instrumental in the discovery of dark energy. However, despite a number of decades of research, we still do not understand how exactly they explode. We are now in a position to make big leaps forward in our understanding through the advent of new state-of-the-art astrophysical transient surveys that are scanning the sky looking for new transients that have just exploded. Catching the explosions very early is crucial for solving the mystery of how they explode because subtle clues are present at this time. The aim of the project SUPERSTARS was to use data from these next-generation surveys, combined with the latest theoretical models, to understand the origin of Type Ia supernovae. This involved two distinct work packages, i) to build a legacy sample of Type Ia supernovae with the best data possible and ii) to explore the diversity of how the explode by observing the zoo of exotic transients that have recently begun to be detected in these surveys. Together these data will be used to constrain the explosion mechanisms and diversity of Type Ia supernovae, allowing us to understand the origin of elements such as iron in the Universe as well as improving the use of Type Ia supernovae as cosmological distance indicators in the Universe. The main conclusions of the action, include constraining for the first time in a meaningful sample the relative rates of white dwarf explosions in the Universe, as well as understanding the presence of circumstellar material around SNe Ia and the link to their explosion mechanisms.
