The James Webb firsts keep coming, with the new space telescope recently spotting what could be the most distant galaxy ever observed. Now, it may have spotted its first supernova.
The potential supernova detected by the James Webb Space Telescope. Pace Telescope Science Institute
As Inverse reports, researchers using Webb believe they have observed a supernova using the NIRCam instrument. They compared Webb’s data with data collected with Hubble and found a bright object that could be a star that had just gone supernova.
A supernova occurs when a massive star runs out of fuel and reaches the end of its life. When the star collapses, it ejects much of its material in a huge explosion that emits large amounts of light. This light is so bright that it can be seen from great distances. Webb spotted one such bright flash in the galaxy SDSS.J141930.11+5251593. The telescope took two observations of the galaxy five days apart, and in the second observation, the flash was less bright, suggesting it is dimming over time.
“We’ll need more time series data to make a determination, but the data we have matches that of a supernova, so it’s a very good candidate,” said lead author Mike Engesser of the Institute of Science at Space Telescope in Reverse.
This finding is quite surprising, even with Webb’s extreme sensitivity. Because supernovae are transient events, meaning they don’t last long, you have to be lucky to see one when it happens. Although the supernova technically happened billions of years ago, we’re only seeing it now because light takes time to travel to us from the distant galaxy.
Webb wasn’t designed to detect supernovae, but researchers are making the most of the data collected so far and finding surprising uses for it. The advantage of looking at this type of objective with Webb is that it will be able to observe the area around the supernova to see its effects and the consequences of such a large explosion. Understanding more about supernovae is important not only for understanding their life cycles. of stars, but also to measure the expansion of the universe. A class of supernovae called type 1a are used as “mile markers” to measure distances because they have consistent levels of brightness and can be seen from great distances.
Editors’ recommendations