Explosive star death witnessed by Hubble could help develop an early warning system

Astronomers had an unprecedented front-row seat to the explosive death of a star 60 million light-years away. They witnessed the event thanks to telescopes on the ground and in space, including the Hubble Space Telescope.

These observations not only provided groundbreaking insight into what happens before a star dies, but could also help astronomers develop an early warning system for stars that are about to meet their end.

"We used to talk about supernova work like we were crime scene investigators, where we would show up after the fact and try to figure out what happened to that star," said Ryan Foley, leader of the discovery team and assistant professor in the University of California, Santa Cruz, astronomy and astrophysics department, in a statement."This is a different situation, because we really know what's going on and we actually see the death in real time."

The supernova, called SN 2020fqv, is located in the interacting Butterfly Galaxies, which can be found in the Virgo constellation. While the star's death occurred millions of years ago, the light from the supernova is just now reaching Earth.

The supernova was discovered in April 2020 by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory at the California Institute of Technology in San Diego. The celestial event was also under observation by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. Scientists mainly use TESS to search for planets outside of our solar system, but the satellite also stares at the stars and has made other discoveries beyond finding exoplanets.