WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The explosive death of a star – a supernova – is among the most violent cosmic events, but precisely how this cataclysm looks as it unfolds has remained mysterious. Scientists now have observed for the first time the very early stages of a supernova, with a massive star exploding in a distinctive olive-like shape.

The researchers used the European Southern Observatory’s Chile-based Very Large Telescope, or VLT, to observe the supernova, which involved a star roughly 15 times the mass of our sun residing in a galaxy called NGC 3621 about 22 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Hydra. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

The shape of such explosions has been hard to nail down until

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