Visible supernovas are rare, but there was one in 1987. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A Here is the Wikipedia pag

Visible supernovas are rare, but there was one in 1987. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A Here is the Wikipedia page for the star that died over 30 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanduleak_-69_202 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanduleak_-69_202 You can see meteors all the time. A bit of trivia I read somewhere is that your spot on the earth is facing more "into the wind" the later it gets after midnight, so that's when it's best to look for them. Usually meteors are just streaks of light, but once I went partway up a mountain for a forecasted meteor shower and I saw one just like people render it for an illustration (except much smaller because of the distance) - you could see it was a white hot fireball, shading to red, shading to blue, with a long bluish tail.