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LiveScience
LiveScience
Elizabeth Howell

A star 20 times the size of the sun died in a supernova — and telescopes around the world joined forces to watch it

A deep space image with three vertical boxouts on the right side showing smudges of color for a supernova.

A fleet of telescopes around the world just captured the first shocking moments of a supernova explosion in the most detailed-ever observations of their kind.

The explosive event was first spotted by China's Einstein Probe space telescope as a flash of X-rays in March. Ground-based telescopes jumped in within the hour and quickly identified the flash as a supernova, a powerful explosion of a massive dying star. Before long, a big team of observatories was on the job, including the wide-field Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which began its ambitious 10-year survey of the sky in late June.

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