A Stellar Explosion 650 Million Light-Years Away Captured by Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope captures the mesmerizing galaxy LEDA 22057, home to a recent supernova explosion, SN 2024PI.

This new image from the Hubble Space Telescope showcases the galaxy LEDA 22057, located approximately 650 million light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Similar to last week’s featured galaxy, LEDA 22057 is the site of a spectacular supernova explosion. The supernova, named SN 2024PI, was first detected in January 2024 by an automated survey. This survey scans the entire northern half of the night sky every two days and has documented over 10,000 supernovae to date.

In this image, the supernova is visible as a pale blue dot just below and to the right of the galaxy’s core. It contrasts beautifully with the faint, ethereal spiral arms of LEDA 22057. Captured roughly six weeks after its discovery, SN 2024PI appears significantly dimmer than it did at the peak of its brilliance.

SN 2024PI is classified as a Type Ia supernova. This type of supernova requires a remarkable object called a white dwarf, the crystallized core of a star with a mass less than about eight times the mass of the Sun. When a star of this size uses up the supply of hydrogen in its core, it balloons into a red giant, becoming cool, puffy, and luminous. Over time, pulsations and stellar winds cause the star to shed its outer layers, leaving behind a white dwarf and a colorful planetary nebula. White dwarfs can have surface temperatures higher than 100,000 degrees and are extremely dense, packing roughly the mass of the Sun into a sphere the size of Earth.

While nearly all of the stars in the Milky Way will one day evolve into white dwarfs — this is the fate that awaits the Sun some five billion years in the future — not all of them will explode as Type Ia supernovae. For that to happen, the white dwarf must be a member of a binary star system. When a white dwarf siphons material from a stellar partner, the white dwarf can become too massive to support itself. The resulting burst of runaway nuclear fusion destroys the white dwarf in a supernova explosion that can be seen many galaxies away.

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