And there is one such star in our own Milky Way galaxy that appears to be on the brink of dying in just such a supernova.
The exploding star's dramatic death may have come in a rare type of supernova reserved for 'freakishly massive' stars that astronomers have speculated about but never previously witnessed.
The supernova, designated as SN 2006gy, occurred 240 million light-years away in a galaxy called NGC 1260, and was studied using observations from NASA's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory as well as optical telescopes on Earth.
The explosion occurred long ago but was detected last year after its light travelled many, many trillions of kilometres before it could be observed from Earth.
"That sounds far away but it's actually quite nearby on the vast scale of the universe," says astronomer Dr Nathan Smith of the University of California at Berkeley, who led the research.
The supernova was discovered in September 2006, and is the most powerful and brightest ever observed, Smith says.
"In fact, even after the better part of a year, well after 200 days, it has faded somewhat but it's still about as bright as a normal supernova at its peak," he says.
The scientists rule out a possible alternative explanation that what they were witnessing was the explosion of a white dwarf star with a mass only a bit more than the Sun.
A supernova marks a star's death in a spectacular explosion. Scientists say these events play a crucial role in creating heavy elements through nuclear fusion and synthesis and then expelling them into space, seeding the cosmos with metals.
Astrophysicist Dr Mario Livio, of the Space Telescope Science Institute, says this supernova may have resulted from a type of explosion mechanism that had existed only in theoretical calculations.
He says the first generation of stars in the universe may have died in such a manner.
But this supernova appears to be the result of the core not collapsing but being obliterated in an explosion blasting all its material into space, the scientists say.
Dr Dave Pooley, of the University of California at Berkeley, says this star appears similar to Eta Carinae, a star perhaps 100-120 times the mass of the Sun located 7500 light-years away within the Milky Way.
A light-year is about 10 trillion kilometres, the distance light travels in a year.
There has not been a supernova in our galaxy in more than 400 years, Pooley says.
If Eta Carinae were to burst into a supernova, Pooley says there would be an enourmous explosion.
"It would be so bright that you would see it during the day, and you could even read a book by its light at night," he says.
Livio says Eta Carinae had an incredible eruption during the 19th century that left it in an hourglass shape. He says it could explode at any time.
"This could happen tomorrow, it could happen 1000 years from now," Livio says. "Is there a risk to life on Earth as a result of this explosion? Well, not very likely."
Livio says Earth could be affected if there were a gamma-ray burst that potentially could harm the atmosphere and life, but the chances of this aiming directly at Earth are slim.