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

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.

With this fleet of telescopes, astronomers charted how the light of...