Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech)

While searching the skies for black holes using the Spitzer Space Telescope Deep Wide Field Survey, Ohio State University astronomers discovered a giant supernova that was smothered in its own dust. In this artists rendering, an outer shell of gas and dust -- which erupted from the star hundreds of years ago -- obscures the supernova within. This event in a distant galaxy hints at one possible future for the brightest star system in our own Milky Way