The Hubble Space Telescope captured images of a rare supernova explosion as a white dwarf collapses.. This star exploded in the distant galaxy LEDA 22057 at a distance of 650 million light years from Earth, writes Space.
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A new photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope shows spiral galaxy LEDA 22057, where a rare supernova explosion was discovered. The swirling mass of a spiral galaxy is centered around an oval region of the core with a white glow, from which curling spiral arms emerge.
The supernova is named SN 2024PI and can be seen as a pale blue dot that stands out against the background of interstellar gas, slightly below and to the right of the core of the spiral galaxy..
The Hubble Space Telescope captured images of a rare supernova about a month and a half after astronomers received evidence that a white dwarf had exploded in a distant galaxy.. Therefore, supernova SN 2024PI in this image does not look as bright as it was at the moment the star exploded.
Supernovae typically explode when massive stars die, resulting in their complete destruction. But there are rare type 1a supernovae, and this is exactly what SN 2024PI is.. For a type 1a supernova explosion to occur, you need a white dwarf star.. These are small, Earth-sized, very dense stars, the mass of which can reach the mass of the Sun or more, appear after the death of ordinary stars similar to the Sun and having the same or slightly greater mass.
Although, more precisely, in order for a type 1a supernova explosion to occur, the white dwarf must be part of a binary star system in which two stars revolve around a common center of mass. Often the white dwarf's companion is a huge red giant star.. The white dwarf takes part of the matter from its companion and when it gains too much mass, a thermonuclear explosion occurs, which destroys the small and very dense star.
We remind you that the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit in 1990 and is a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency.
If the Hubble telescope continues its observations of space, then the Gaia telescope, which is located at a distance of 1.5 million km from Earth, on January 15 finished collecting information about our galaxy, which it had been doing since 2013, and stopped its work, as Focus already wrote.
Focus also wrote that astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole at a distance of 12.9 billion light years from us, which shoots a beam of energy at the Earth. The new blazar is the oldest known to astronomers, and its mass is 700 million times greater than that of the Sun..