{"id":38595,"date":"2025-08-01T17:29:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T17:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/38595\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T17:29:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T17:29:12","slug":"hubble-surveys-supernova-rich-spiral-nasa-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/38595\/","title":{"rendered":"Hubble Surveys Supernova-Rich Spiral &#8211; NASA Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rich with detail, the spiral galaxy NGC 1309 shines in this NASA\/ESA <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/hubble\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hubble Space Telescope<\/a> image. NGC 1309 is about 100 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.<\/p>\n<p>This stunning Hubble image encompasses NGC 1309\u2019s bluish stars, dark brown gas clouds, and pearly-white core, as well as hundreds of distant background galaxies. Nearly every smudge, streak, and blob of light in this image is an individual galaxy, some shining through less dense regions of NGC 1309 itself. The only exception to this extragalactic ensemble is a star near the top of the frame identified by its <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/hubble\/multimedia\/hubble-glossary\/#h-diffraction-spikes\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">diffraction spikes<\/a>. The star is positively neighborly at just a few thousand light-years away in the Milky Way galaxy.<\/p>\n<p>Hubble turned its attention toward NGC 1309 several times; previous Hubble images of this galaxy were released in <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/missions\/hubble\/hubble-snaps-images-of-a-pinwheel-shaped-galaxy\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2006<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/asset\/hubble\/spiral-galaxy-ngc-1309\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2014<\/a>. Much of NGC 1309\u2019s scientific interest derives from two supernovae, SN 2002fk in 2002 and SN 2012Z in 2012. SN 2002fk was a perfect example of a Type Ia supernova, which happens when the stripped-down core of a dead star (a <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/hubble\/multimedia\/hubble-glossary\/#h-white-dwarf-star\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">white dwarf<\/a>) explodes.<\/p>\n<p>SN 2012Z, on the other hand, was a bit of a renegade. It was classified as a Type Iax supernova: while its spectrum resembled that of a Type Ia supernova, the explosion wasn\u2019t as bright as expected. <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/missions\/hubble\/nasas-hubble-finds-supernova-star-system-linked-to-potential-zombie-star\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hubble observations showed<\/a> that in this case, the supernova did not destroy the white dwarf completely, leaving behind a \u2018zombie star\u2019 that shone even brighter than it did before the explosion. Hubble observations of NGC 1309 taken across several years also made this the first time astronomers spotted a star system that later produced an unusual supernova explosion of a white dwarf.<\/p>\n<p>Text Credit: ESA\/Hubble<\/p>\n<p>Media Contact:<\/p>\n<p>Claire Andreoli\u00a0(<a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/missions\/hubble\/hubble-surveys-supernova-rich-spiral\/mailto:claire.andreoli@nasa.gov\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">claire.andreoli@nasa.gov<\/a>)<br \/>NASA&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/goddard\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Goddard Space Flight Center<\/a>,\u00a0Greenbelt, MD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rich with detail, the spiral galaxy NGC 1309 shines in this NASA\/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. NGC 1309&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[11745,12161,21870,13721,22408,90,416,18466,13722,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-38595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-astrophysics","9":"tag-astrophysics-division","10":"tag-galaxies","11":"tag-goddard-space-flight-center","12":"tag-hubble-space-telescope","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-spiral-galaxies","16":"tag-the-universe","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}