Skip to main content

Hubble had a ringside seat to observe a star going supernova

When they run out of fuel and come to the end of their lives, stars can die in a most dramatic fashion: Exploding in an epic supernova that throws out dust and gas at tremendous speeds. Astronomers often see the remnants of such supernovas, but recently the Hubble Space Telescope observed something much rarer when it captured a star in the process of going supernova.

Supernova SN 2020fqv is located in the two interacting Butterfly Galaxies, 60 million light-years away from Earth. It was first spotted in April 2020 by the Zwicky Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory when the star was in the earliest stages of a supernova, and Hubble scientists quickly decided to turn their attention to it as well.

Astronomers recently witnessed supernova SN 2020fqv explode inside the interacting Butterfly galaxies.
Astronomers recently witnessed supernova SN 2020fqv explode inside the interacting Butterfly galaxies, located about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. Researchers quickly trained NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on the aftermath. AUTHOR: NASA, ESA, Ryan Foley (UC Santa Cruz) IMAGE PROCESSING: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

“We used to talk about supernova work like we were crime scene investigators, where we would show up after the fact and try to figure out what happened to that star,” explained team leader Ryan Foley of the University of California, Santa Cruz, in a statement. “This is a different situation, because we really know what’s going on and we actually see the death in real time.”

Hubble was able to catch a glimpse of the material around the star, called circumstellar material, just a few hours after the supernova had occurred. This is an incredibly rare opportunity to study what happened to the star in its final days, as this material is only visible to telescopes for a very short time.

Along with data from NASA’s exoplanet-hunting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which was also observing the region, scientists were able to build up a picture of what happened to the star in its final years before exploding.

“Now we have this whole story about what’s happening to the star in the years before it died, through the time of death, and then the aftermath of that,” said Foley. “This is really the most detailed view of stars like this in their last moments and how they explode.”

Understanding this particular star could help us understand other stars which may be on the verge of going supernova, like our neighboring star Betelgeuse which some people thought could be about to go supernova in 2019 (though in that case, the star’s odd behavior turned out to be due to a cloud of dust rather than an imminent explosion).

“This could be a warning system,” said Foley. “So if you see a star start to shake around a bit, start acting up, then maybe we should pay more attention and really try to understand what’s going on there before it explodes. As we find more and more of these supernovas with this sort of excellent data set, we’ll be able to understand better what’s happening in the last few years of a star’s life.”

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Hear the otherworldly sounds of interacting galaxies with this Hubble sonification
This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image showcases a resplendent pair of galaxies known as Arp 140.

When two different galaxies get close enough together that they begin interacting, they are sometimes given a shared name. That's the case with a newly released image from the Hubble Space Telescope that shows two galaxies, NGC 274 and NGC 275, which are together known as Arp 140. not only is there a new image of the pair, but there's also a sonification available so you can hear the image as well as see it.

This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image showcases a resplendent pair of galaxies known as Arp 140. NASA/ESA/R. Foley (University of California - Santa Cruz)/Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

Read more
Hubble captures an exceptionally luminous supernova site
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image is of the small galaxy known as UGC 5189A.

This week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the aftermath of an epic explosion in space caused by the death of a massive star.

Some of the most dramatic events in the cosmos are supernovas, when a massive star runs out of fuel to fuse -- first running out of hydrogen, then helium, then burning through heavier elements -- and eventually can no longer sustain the outward pressure from heat caused by this fusion. When that happens, the star collapses suddenly into a dense core, and its outer layers are thrown off in a tremendous explosion called a Type II supernova.

Read more
Hubble images a pair of galaxies caught in the process of merging
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features Arp 122, a peculiar galaxy that in fact comprises two galaxies – NGC 6040, the tilted, warped spiral galaxy and LEDA 59642, the round, face-on spiral – that are in the midst of a collision.

After last week's image of the week from the Hubble Space Telescope showed a cluster of galaxies that appeared to be very close to each other but actually weren't, this week's image shows two images that are practically on top of each other. The two galaxies shown in the image below, NGC 6040 and LEDA 59642, are so close that they are interacting and have a shared name as a pair, Arp 122.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features Arp 122, a peculiar galaxy that in fact comprises two galaxies – NGC 6040, the tilted, warped spiral galaxy and LEDA 59642, the round, face-on spiral – that are in the midst of a collision. ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Acknowledgement: L. Shatz

Read more