Astronomers have captured the death of a massive star from its first faint flash of X-rays, revealing an unusual explosion that may bridge the gap between ordinary supernovas and more extreme, gamma-ray-burst-producing stellar explosions
The event began in March 2026, when China’s Einstein Probe spacecraft detected a brief X-ray flash from a galaxy about 500 million light-years away. Follow-up observations identified the source, initially designated EP260321a…