The observation of supernovae (SNe) has a long history. The first reliably recorded SN, ``SN~185'', dated back to AD 185, was reported in $\it{Book\ of\ the\ Later\ Han\ Dynasty}$ by ancient Chinese astronomers. During the centuries after that, a few SNe were discovered. The earliest systematic search for extragalactic transients was initiated in the late 1930s, and over 100 SNe were spotted by the Palomar Supernova Search in the following decades. The detection efficiency of SNe was significantly improved in the 1990s, thanks to the advancement of charge-coupled devices (CCDs) incorporated into robotic telescopes and automatic search. More recently, the wide application of large-array CCD cameras in wide-field transient survey projects have found SNe across a wide range of redshift, and the discovery rate of SNe has been increasing exponentially over the last two decades.
The wealth of SN data has remarkably deepened our understanding of stellar evolution, the SN explosion mechanism, the chemical enrichment of galaxies, and the fundamental physics of the universe. In the upcoming decade, growth spurts of transient detections in both northern and southern hemispheres are expected, resulting from wide-field surveys conducted by WFST and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
The operation of the WFST high-cadence deep imaging survey allow us to anticipate detection of tens of thousands of SNe from the 6-years survey project. Over one hundred SNe within a few days after their explosions (``early-phase supernovae") are expected to be discovered every year. The flood of well-observed SNe data collected by WFST promises to help construct a more solid connection between the evolving stars and the stars dying as SNe.