May 4, 2024

Secrets of an Earlier Universe Revealed by Red-Supergiant Supernova

” This is the first in-depth take a look at a supernova at a much earlier date of the Universes development,” stated Patrick Kelly, a lead author of the paper and an associate teacher in the University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy. “Its extremely exciting because we can learn in information about an individual star when the Universe was less than a fifth of its present age, and start to understand if the stars that existed lots of billions of years ago are various from the ones close by.”
The red supergiant in question was about 500 times larger than the sun, and its located at redshift 3, which has to do with 60 times further away than any other supernova observed in this information.
An international research team led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities has determined the size of a star going back more than 11 billion years ago using images that reveal the advancement of the star taking off and cooling. The above image reveals the light from the supernova behind the galaxy cluster Abell 370. Credit: Wenlei Chen, NASA
Utilizing data from the Hubble Space Telescope with follow-up spectroscopy utilizing the University of Minnesotas access to the Large Binocular Telescope, the researchers had the ability to determine several in-depth images of the red supergiant due to the fact that of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, where mass, such as that in a galaxy, bends light. This magnifies the light produced from the star.
Even though they can be seen at the very same time, they show the supernova as it was at various ages separated by numerous days. We see the supernova quickly cooling, which enables us to generally reconstruct what happened and study how the supernova cooled in its very first few days with just one set of images.
The scientists integrated this discovery with another one of Kellys supernova discoveries from 2014 to approximate how lots of stars were taking off when the Universe was a small portion of its current age. They found that there were likely numerous more supernovae than previously believed.
Panels A-D (clockwise from upper left) reveal numerous various stages of the supernova: the place of the host galaxy after the supernova faded, the 3 images of the host galaxy and the supernova at various phases in its development, the 3 various faces of the evolving supernova, and the different colors of the cooling supernova. Credit: Wenlei Chen, NASA
” Core-collapse supernovae mark the deaths of enormous, short-term stars. The variety of core-collapse supernovae we detect can be used to comprehend the number of huge stars were formed in galaxies when the Universe was much more youthful,” said Wenlei Chen, very first author of the paper and a postdoctoral scientist in the University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy.
Recommendation: “Shock cooling of a red-supergiant supernova at redshift 3 in lensed images” by Wenlei Chen, Patrick L. Kelly, Masamune Oguri, Thomas J. Broadhurst, Jose M. Diego, Najmeh Emami, Alexei V. Filippenko, Tommaso L. Treu and Adi Zitrin, 9 November 2022, Nature.DOI: 10.1038/ s41586-022-05252-5.
The research study was funded by the National Science Foundation; the Hubble Space Telescope Cycle 27 Archival Research and Frontier Fields program; the World Premier International Research Center Initiative, MEXT, Japan; the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation; the Ministry of Science & & Technology, Israel; the Christopher R. Redlich Fund; and the University of California, Berkeley Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science.
In addition to Kelly and Chen, the research team included University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy researcher Najmeh Emami; University of Tokyo researcher Masamune Oguri; University of the Basque Country research professor Thomas Broadhurst; Instituto de Física de Cantabria scientist Jose Diego; University of California, Berkeley teacher Alexei Filippenko; University of California, Los Angeles professor Tommaso Treu; and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev partner professor Adi Zitrin.

An artists rendition of a red supergiant star transitioning into a Type II supernova, discharging a violent eruption of radiation and gas on its dying breath before exploding and collapsing. Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko
Comprehensive telescope images help researchers find out more about deep space two billion years after the Big Bang.
An international research group has measured the size of a star going back 2 billion years after the Big Bang, or more than 11 billion years back. In-depth images reveal the taking off star cooling and might assist scientists find out more about the stars and galaxies that existed in the early Universe.
Led by scientists at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, the study was published just recently in Nature, the worlds leading peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary science journal.

A worldwide research group led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities has actually measured the size of a star dating back more than 11 billion years ago using images that show the evolution of the star cooling and taking off. The above image reveals the light from the supernova behind the galaxy cluster Abell 370. Even though they can be seen at the exact same time, they reveal the supernova as it was at different ages separated by several days. We see the supernova rapidly cooling, which permits us to essentially reconstruct what happened and study how the supernova cooled in its very first few days with simply one set of images. It enables us to see a rerun of a supernova.”