What can an exploding star in a distant galaxy teach scientists about red supergiants? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated how a supernova millions of light years from Earth could have originated from a red supergiant star. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand supernovae and their origin stars, also called progenitors.
For the study, the researchers used a combination of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe the pre- and post-explosion of a star that is approximately 12 Megaparsecs (Mpc) from Earth and resides in the intermediate spiral galaxy, NGC 1637. The star responsible for producing the supernova, the latter of which is identified as SN 2025pht, was first observed 31 by HST years ago and by JWST 8.4 months before exploding. After analyzing the data, the researchers determined that the supernova originated from a red supergiant star, which ranges between 8 to 10 times the mass of the Sun, and of which astronomers know very little about.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Charles Kilpatrick (Northwestern), Aswin Suresh (Northwestern)
“For multiple decades, we have been trying to determine exactly what the explosions of red supergiant stars look like,” said Dr. Charlie Kilpatrick, who is an assistant research professor at Northwestern University’s CIERA and lead author of the study. “Only now, with JWST, do we finally have the quality of data and infrared observations that allow us to say precisely the exact type of red supergiant that exploded and what its immediate environment looked like.”
Going forward, the team aspires to find more red supergiants that could explode into supernovae in the future. This comes as NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is slated to launch in October 2026, could open doors for examining the night sky in ways never before.
What new discoveries about supernovae and red supergiants will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: The Astrophysical Journal Letters, EurekAlert!