WASHINGTON : Scientists have taken a close-up picture of a star apparently in its death throes, surrounded by gas and dust as it heads toward its demise in a huge explosion called a supernova - the first time the events of this pivotal stage have ever been imaged. What makes this even more remarkable, according to the researchers, is that the observed star resides not in our Milky Way galaxy but in a neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. It is the first zoomed-in image of a