Does this amateur observation hold a record even including robotic searches for supernovae? The new paper in Nature A surge of light at the birth of a supernova (doi:10.1038/nature25151) describes the fortuitous capture of a supernova "Shock Breakout" - the earliest rise in brightness of a supernova only about 4 hours old. An open access epdf is linked in the Washington Post article if you click from inside it: A self-taught astronomer spotted something no scientist had ever seen which is a good read itself.


  His discovery, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, is a landmark for astronomy. Buso’s images are the first to capture the brief “shock breakout” phase of a supernova, when a wave of energy rolls from a star’s core to its exterior just before the star explodes. Computer models had suggested the existence of this phase, but no one had witnessed it.


Is this the earliest that such a phenomenon has been "seen" by a person, or does this observation also hold the record after including all of the automated searches for supernovae by robotic telescopes as well?



below: "Astronomer Victor Buso poses in front of the telescope with which he witnessed the birth of the supernova 2016gkg. (Victor Buso)" From here. Click/open for full size.
No, supernovae have been observed earlier and with better cadence than this one. 

The Kepler Satellite has been observing galaxies at a 30 minute cadence from months before the supernova explosion to months afterwards.  Most of these have been Type Ia which do not have detectable shock breakouts, but there was one SN with a breakout published in the Astrophysical Journal before this one: "Shock Breakout and Early Light Curves of a Type II-P Supernovae Observed with Kepler".  

The Nature paper linked in the question provides 4 other SN that were also detected about as early.  I think the new thing here is that it was discovered so early by an amateur astronomer.