Two “supernova factories”, rare clusters of Red Supergiant (RSG) stars, have been located in the Galactic Bar of the Milky Way. “RSGs represent the final brief stage in a massive star’s lifecycle before it goes supernova. They are very rare objects, so to find this many in the same place is remarkable. Together they contain 40 RSGs, which is nearly 20% of all the known RSGs in the Milky Way. These stars are all at the brink of going supernova,” said one of the astronomers.