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When the light arrived, sky surveys caught it fast, and astronomers jumped in to figure out what, exactly, had just ended.<\/p>\n
A supernova with a paper trail<\/p>\n
The event was designated supernova 2025pht after it was detected by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae.<\/p>\n
Once a star explodes<\/a>, experts typically work backward with evidence that can be collected after the fact \u2013 including light curves, spectra, and follow-up images.<\/p>\n Here, a team took a different route. Instead of starting with the blast, they started with old pictures. <\/p>\n The scientists searched telescope archives to find the exact star that used to sit where the supernova<\/a> now shines, surrounded by countless other stars in the same galaxy.<\/p>\n Discovery of a red supergiant<\/p>\n The archive images were captured by NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope while it was observing the galaxy NGC 1637. In those data, astronomers identified a red supergiant positioned exactly where the supernova would later erupt.<\/p>\n That match is why this result matters: it\u2019s the first published time Webb has been used to identify a supernova\u2019s progenitor star before the explosion.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been waiting for this to happen \u2013 for a supernova to explode in a galaxy that Webb had already observed. We combined Hubble and Webb data sets to completely characterize this star for the first time,\u201d said study lead author Charlie Kilpatrick of Northwestern University<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dust that hides big stars<\/p>\n To nail down the identification, the team carefully lined up images from Hubble and Webb and then looked at Webb observations taken in 2024. The star showed up in Webb\u2019s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). <\/p>\n What they saw was odd: the star looked unusually red, which is often what happens when dust<\/a> blocks more of the shorter, bluer light.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the reddest, most dusty red supergiant that we\u2019ve seen explode as a supernova,\u201d said graduate student and co-author Aswin Suresh of Northwestern University.<\/p>\n That kind of dust matters because it connects to a long-running puzzle sometimes framed as \u201cmissing\u201d red supergiants. <\/p>\n Astronomers expect the most massive stars that explode as supernovas to be bright enough to spot in older images, yet many don\u2019t show up. One leading idea is that the biggest, oldest stars<\/a> may also be wrapped in dust thick enough to dim them until they\u2019re hard to detect at all, and this star fits that picture.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been arguing in favor of that interpretation, but even I didn\u2019t expect to see it as extreme as it was for supernova 2025pht. It would explain why these more massive supergiants are missing because they tend to be more dusty,\u201d said Kilpatrick.<\/p>\n What comes next<\/p>\n The team also took a close look at what the dust seems to be made of. Using computer models with Webb\u2019s data, they found signs the dust is likely carbon-rich<\/a>, even though astronomers would have expected more silicate-rich dust around a red supergiant. <\/p>\n The team thinks that carbon may have been pulled up from inside the star not long before it exploded.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving observations in the mid-infrared was key to constraining what kind of dust we were seeing,\u201d said Suresh. <\/p>\n Now the team is looking for more red supergiants like this one, with the idea that catching them before they explode could help explain how massive stars shed material near the end. <\/p>\n NASA\u2019s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope may help, since it should be able to spot these stars in infrared light and track changes as they \u201cburp\u201d out large amounts of dust late in life.<\/p>\n The full study was published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A star can burn for millions of years and still manage one final surprise. In this case, that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-325309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}