Video by Unfuzified

Between April 2003 and August 2005, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope detected 241 Type Ia supernovas, which are explosions of one or more white dwarf stars. University of Victoria astronomer Alex Parker and UC Santa Barbara's Melissa Graham took data collected during this period as part of the CFHT Legacy Survey and made it into music. For this "Supernova Sonata," each supernova was assigned a pitch (based on its "stretch" -- a property of how it brightens and fades), an instrument (based on the kind of galaxy in which it was observed -- massive galaxies = stand-up bass, less massive = grand piano), and a volume (based on the distance to the supernova).

The astronomers/artists explain how they constructed the above video:

The four Deep Fields are shown in color, and the positions of all the supernova are illustrated as time progresses. The animation is rendered at 15 frames per second, and each frame corresponds to just under a single day (one second in the animation corresponds to roughly two weeks of real time).

via io9