Aftermath Of Supernova In The Spiral Galaxy UGC 11860 Observed By The Hubble Space Telescope

In this Hubble Space Telescope image, the spiral galaxy UGC 11860 appears to float serenely among a landscape of background galaxies. UGC 11860 is located around 184 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus, and its peaceful aspect may deceive; this galaxy just hosted an almost inconceivable intense star explosion.

In 2014, a supernova explosion — the catastrophically violent end of the life of a big star — was identified in UGC 11860 by a robotic telescope specialised to combing the skies for transient astronomical phenomena; astronomical events that are only visible for a brief period of time. Two separate teams of astronomers utilised Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to dig through the debris and unearth the leftover traces of this massive cosmic explosion.

One team investigated UGC 11860 in order to learn more about the progenitor star systems that later die as supernovae. The unbelievably intense environment created by supernova explosions is primarily responsible for the formation of elements on the periodic table between silicon and nickel. This implies that knowing the effect of the masses and compositions of progenitor star systems is critical to explaining how many of the chemical elements on Earth arose.

The other group of scientists utilised Hubble to track down supernovae discovered by robotic telescopes. These automatic eyes in the sky operate without human intervention and capture fleeting occurrences in the night sky. Robotic telescopes enable astronomers to discover everything from unexpected asteroids to uncommon, surprising supernovae, and they can find fascinating objects that can ultimately be studied further by large telescopes like Hubble.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Filippenko, J. D. Lyman