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By Ashley Strickland, CNN
2 minute read
Updated 2:31 PM EDT, Fri June 9, 2023
The Gemini North telescope captured an image of a bright new supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy.
The ring-like shell of the first recorded supernova was captured by the Dark Energy Camera on the Víctor M. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The glowing debris marks where a white dwarf star exploded more than 1,800 years ago and was recorded by Chinese astronomers in the year 185.
This artist's illustration shows the large, puffy star Gaia17bpp being partially eclipsed by a dust cloud that surrounds its mysterious smaller companion star.
An image of the Sh2-54 Nebula was taken in infrared light using the European Southern Observatory's VISTA telescope at Paranal Observatory in Chile.
The Gemini North telescope captured a pair of galaxies, NGC 4567 (top) and NGC 4568 (bottom), as they collide. Nicknamed the Butterfly galaxies, they will eventually merge as a single galaxy in 500 million years.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured a spectacular head-on view of the grand design spiral galaxy NGC 3631, located about 53 million light-years away.
This collection of 37 images from the Hubble Space Telescope, taken between 2003 and 2021, includes galaxies that are all hosts to both Cepheid variables and supernovae. They serve as cosmic tools to measure astronomical distance and refine the expansion rate of the universe.
This is the first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope project.
Two galaxies, NGC 1512 and NGC 1510, appear to dance in this image from the Dark Energy Camera. The galaxies have been in the process of merging for 400 million years, which has ignited waves of star formation and warped both galaxies.
This illustration shows exocomets orbiting the nearby star Beta Pictoris. Astronomers have detected at least 30 exocomets in the system, which also hosts two exoplanets.
This artist's impression shows a two-star system, with a white dwarf (foreground) and a companion star (background), where a micronova explosion can occur. Although these stellar explosions are smaller than supernovae, they can be intensely powerful.
This sequence of images shows how the solid nucleus (or the "dirty snowball" heart) of Comet C/2014 UN271 was isolated from a vast shell of dust and gas to measure it. Scientists believe the nucleus could be 85 miles across.
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of the most distant star yet: Earendel, which is nearly 13 billion light-years away.
Astronomers have imaged a space phenomena called odd radio circles using the Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope. These space rings are so massive that they measure about a million light-years across -- 16 times bigger than our Milky Way galaxy.
This illustration shows what happens when two large celestial bodies collide in space, creating a debris cloud. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope saw a debris cloud block the light of the star HD 166191.
Some 4.4 million space objects billions of light-years away have been mapped by astronomers, including 1 million space objects that hadn't been spotted before. The observations were made by the sensitive Low Frequency Array telescope, known as LOFAR.
An unusual triangle shape formed by two galaxies crashing together in a cosmic tug-of-war has been captured in a new image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The head-on collision between the two galaxies fueled a star-forming frenzy, creating "the oddball triangle of newly minted stars."
This image of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A combines some of the first X-ray data collected by NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, shown in magenta, with high-energy X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, in blue.
This image shows the Milky Way as viewed from Earth. The star icon shows the position of a mysterious repeating transient. The spinning space object beamed out radiation three times per hour and became the brightest source of radio waves viewable from Earth, acting like a celestial lighthouse.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10, which is filled with young stars. The bright center, surrounded by pink clouds, indicates the location of its black hole and areas of star birth.
This image shows the Flame Nebula and its surroundings captured in radio waves.
This artist's impression showcases a red supergiant star in the final year of its life emitting a tumultuous cloud of gas, experiencing significant internal changes before exploding in a supernova.
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CNN —
A sparkling new supernova has appeared in the night sky, and a telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii was perfectly poised to capture the aftermath of the cosmic burst.
The supernova was first spotted within the spiral arms of the Pinwheel Galaxy by Japanese astronomer Koichi Itagaki on May 19. Itagaki, an avid supernova hunter, has discovered more than 80 of the stellar explosions using his observatory in the mountains outside Yamagata, Japan.
The supernova, named SN 2023ixf, is the closest one seen in five years. A supernova occurs when a star violently explodes at the end of its lifetime.
The Pinwheel Galaxy is in the direction of the Ursa Major constellation, about 21 million light-years from Earth. The galaxy faces Earth head-on, which showcases its stunning spiral structure and nearly 1 trillion stars.
The galaxy’s spiral arms are full of nebulae, or regions where stars are born, showcased in pink light. The blue points of light in the image taken by the Hawaii telescope reflect the population of young, hot stars. Dark dust regions are used as one of the key ingredients for star formation.
The new supernova glimmers bright blue in one of the galaxy’s spiral arms in the bottom left of the image. Astronomers believe it is a Type II supernova, when a massive star between eight and 50 times the mass of our sun exhausts its nuclear fuel supply, collapses and explodes. It’s the second supernova observed in the Pinwheel Galaxy in 15 years.
Astronomers are using telescopes to observe the newly discovered supernova to better understand how stars explode and track how the brightness of the explosion evolves and fades over time.
The new image taken of the supernova’s aftermath by the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii marks the observatory’s first return to scientific observations after a seven-month hiatus.
The telescope’s primary mirror was damaged in October while it was being moved, sustaining a chipped edge. The primary mirror has since been refurbished, given a new layer of protective coating and reinstalled, allowing the telescope to resume its search of the night sky for cosmic phenomena.
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