The images were discovered in a review of Hubble observational archival data from 2010.
Washington:
About 11.5 billion years ago, a distant star about 530 times larger than our Sun died in a cataclysmic explosion that blew the outer layers of gas into the surrounding universe, a supernova documented in blow-by-blow detail by astronomers. it was done.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope managed to capture three separate images over a period of eight days that began just hours after the explosion — a feat even more remarkable given how long it took, researchers said Wednesday. How far was it before?
The images were discovered in a review of Hubble observational archival data from 2010, according to astronomer Wenli Chen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.
They offered in one set of images the first glimpse of a supernova rapidly cooling after its initial explosion, and the first in-depth look at a supernova so early in the history of the universe, when it was less than a fifth of its current age.
“The supernova is expanding and cooling, so its color evolves from a warm blue to a cool red,” said study co-author Patrick Kelly, a professor of astronomy at the University of Minnesota.
The doomed star, a type known as a red supergiant, resided in a dwarf galaxy and exploded at the end of its relatively brief lifespan.
“Red supergiants are bright, massive and massive stars, but they are much cooler than other massive stars – that’s why they’re red,” Chen said. “After the red supergiant has exhausted the fusion energy in its core, a core collapse will occur and the supernova explosion will then destroy the star’s outer layers – its hydrogen envelope.”
The first image, about six hours after the initial eruption, shows the eruption as relatively small and fiercely hot – about 180,000 °F (100,000 °K/99,725 °C).
The second picture is from about two days later and the third is from about six days after that. In these two images, the gaseous material ejected from the star is seen expanding outwards. In the second image, the explosion is only a fifth as hot as the first. In the third image, it’s only one tenth as wide as the first.
Chen said the remnants of the exploded star most likely became an incredibly dense object, called a neutron star.
A phenomenon called strong gravitational lensing explains how Hubble was able to obtain three images at different points after the explosion. The tremendous gravitational force exerted by a galaxy cluster located in front of the exploding star from Earth’s point of view acts as a lens – bending and magnifying the light emanating from the supernova.
“The gravity in the galaxy cluster not only bends the light from behind it, but also delays the time of light travel because the stronger the gravity, the slower the clock,” Chen said. “In other words, the emission of light from a source behind the lens can travel through multiple paths towards us, and then we see multiple images of the source.”
Kelly called the ability for gravitational lensing to see a rapidly cooling supernova in a set of images “absolutely astonishing.”
“It’s kind of like watching a film reel in the colors of a supernova evolve, and it’s a more detailed picture of any known supernova that has existed when the universe was a tiny fraction of its current age,” says Kelly. he said.
“The only other examples where we’ve caught a supernova long ago are very nearby explosions,” Kelly said. “When astronomers look at more distant objects, they are looking back in time.”
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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