On the night of February 9, 1996, Robert was part of a team of four astrophysicists from Université Laval to discover a supernova now called SN1996D, which is located in the galaxy NGC 1614, 250 million light years from Earth. Working with colleagues Laurent Drissen, Yvan Dutil and Jean-René Roy, the discovery was made at the Canada-France-Hawaii Astronomical Observatory, located at the top of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii. A paper about the event said, SN1996D appeared suddenly following the explosion of a star whose mass would be about ten times that of the Sun. The supernova is not readily visible to the naked eye but using a quality telescope, amateur observers could expect to see it in dark skies.