A giant star in a faraway galaxy recently came to an unexpected end, smothered in a cloud of its own dust. Typically stars go out in a spectacular bang of glory.

The astronomers who viewed this event suspect that this was more common in the early universe.

In a paper published online in the Astrophysical Journal, Astronomy Professor Christopher Kochanek and his colleagues describe how the supernova appeared in late August 2007.

The researchers were searching the survey data for active galactic nuclei (AGN), super-massive black holes at the centers of galaxies as part of the Spitzer Space Telescope Deep Wide Field Survey.