Astronomers witnessed a red supergiant star in its final days and its massive explosion as it died and turned into a supernova, the first time that instance has ever been observed.

The star was first discovered in summer 2020 by a team of researchers at Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley using the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS telescope at the peak of the Haleakalā volcano in Maui.

A few months later, the automated telescope caught the the star’s death. The team’s finding were published in the Astrophysical Journal on Jan. 6.