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Brightest star explosion

WASHINGTON: A massive exploding faraway star — the brightest supernova astronomers have ever seen — has U.S. scientists wondering whether a similar celestial fireworks show may light up the sky much closer to Earth sometime soon. Using a variety of Earth and space telescopes, astronomers found a giant exploding star that they figure has shined about five times brighter than any of the hundreds of supernovae ever seen before, said discovery team leader Nathan Smith of the University of California at Berkeley. He called the star ``freakily massive'' at 150 times the mass of the sun. Observations show that it didn't become a black hole like other supernovae .

AP

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