The New York Times reports Scientists See Supernova in Action. On January 9th, the Swift space telescope (like Hubble but works in X-rays, gamma-rays and ultraviolet) while looking at a galaxy (NGC2770) in the constellation Lynx happened to catch a star exploding as a supernova.
“Supernova 2008D was the first to be found from its X-ray emission,” said Robert Kirshner, a supernova expert at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Though in Aug 2006 I wrote about this article Scientists watch supernova in real-time which also describes a supernova seen by Swift. The difference seems to be that that one was first noticed in gamma rays and then observed in x-rays.
Still it doesn't get much better than this: "'We caught the whole thing on tape, so to speak,' Dr. Soderberg said in an interview. 'I truly won the astronomy lottery. A star in the galaxy exploded right in front of my eyes.'"
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