A new image of a huge supernova discovered six weeks ago in the nearby galaxy Messier 82 has been captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
This Hubble image shows the supernova SN 2014J in the nearby galaxy M82. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Goobar, Stockholm University / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA.
The bright stellar explosion, named SN 2014J, was discovered by UK astronomers on January 21, 2014.
The supernova is still visible today through small telescopes in the constellation Ursa Major.
SN 2014J is the brightest supernova seen from Earth since SN1987A, 27 years ago, and may be the closest Type Ia supernova – the kind used to measure cosmic distances – in more than 77 years.
The new Hubble image was taken in visible light with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 on January 31, 2014 as the supernova approached its peak brightness. This image was superimposed into a photo mosaic of the entire galaxy taken in 2006 taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
The Hubble data are expected to help astronomers refine distance measurements to Type Ia supernovae. In addition, the observations could yield insights into what kind of stars were involved in the explosion.
Combining observations from the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope at Lick Observatory near San Jose, California, and a Japanese telescope, astronomers led by Dr Alex Filippenko from the University of California, Berkeley, were able to calculate that SN 2014J had unusual characteristics.
SN 2014J brightened faster than expected for a Type Ia supernova and, even more intriguing, it exhibited the same unexpected, rapid brightening as another supernova that the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope discovered and imaged last year – SN 2013dy.
“Now, two of the three most recent and best-observed Type Ia supernovae are weird, giving us new clues to how stars explode,” said Dr Filippenko, referring to a third, though apparently ‘normal,’ Type Ia supernova, SN 2011fe, discovered three years ago.
“This may be teaching us something general about Type Ia supernovae that theorists need to understand. Maybe what we think of as ‘normal’ behavior for these supernovae is actually unusual, and this weird behavior is the new normal,” explained Dr Filippenko, who is a co-author of the paper appearing in the Astrophysical Journal Letters (arXiv.org).
______
WeiKang Zheng et al. 2014. Estimating the First-light Time of the Type Ia Supernova 2014J in M82. ApJ 783, L24; doi: 10.1088/2041-8205/783/1/L24
