Scientists have discovered the explosion of a giant star, known as a supernova explosion, which occurred in a galaxy relatively close to the Milky Way. According to IFLScience, this is the closest supernova explosion to Earth in the last nine years and the closest giant star explosion in 20 years..

Koichi Itagaki was the first to report a supernova explosion, designated SN 2023ixf.. The explosion was later confirmed by astronomers who worked with the Liverpool Telescope.. It is located in the Pinwheel Galaxy, which has become very popular with astrophotographers.. The galaxy is relatively close to Earth, at a distance of 21 million light years, and its almost perfect spiral shape is facing us..

[see_also ids\u003d"

So far, little is known about the explosion of SN 2023ixf. But the Hubble and Swift space telescopes have already postponed planned science missions to observe it..

The progenitor star of the supernova has already been found in archival data from the Spitzer telescope, which shows fluctuations in its brightness in infrared light.. They have been observed for 20 years.

According to scientists' calculations, the supernova is bright enough to be observed with an average home telescope..

I used the color data I already had on this galaxy and stacked about 10 minutes worth of exposures to create this animation. You can see how close the supernova is to some nebulae in the arm… imagine the view from there! pic. twitter. com/I4S0HiacxG.

— Andrew McCarthy (@AJamesMcCarthy) May 20, 2023.

Five supernova explosions have been observed in the Pinwheel Galaxy since 1900.

For comparison, in the Milky Way, such explosions have not happened for 400 years.. The Pinwheel Galaxy has about 2-10 times more stars than our own.. It is actively forming new stars, probably due to gravitational interaction with neighboring galaxies..

Earlier, the James Webb telescope transmitted to Earth an incredibly clear image of the remains of the supernova Cassiopeia A. One of the astronomers said that the data in this image is enough to study them "