March 31, 2008 -- The latest image from the beloved Hubble Space Telescope to go on display is lending astronomers a rare view of the early stages of an exploding star, known as a supernova.
Supernova SN2006bc, discovered in March 2006, is located nearly 60 million light-years from Earth in an elegant spiral galaxy called NGC 2397. The galaxy's arms are flanked by long dust lanes illuminated by starlight in the Hubble images.
In the heart of the galaxy, older stars appear in false-color red and yellow hues. The galaxy's outer, bluish spiral arms cradle regions of active star formation; some individual young stars are visible in the high-resolution images, which were taken by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Astronomers from Queen's University Belfast in northern Ireland, led by Stephen J. Smartt, are studying the galaxy as part of an effort to understand why some stars explode in giant supernovae while others collapse to form black holes. Supernova SN2006bc is visible in the images in the galaxy's lower left-hand quadrant, just where the spiral arms separate from the galactic center.
In their work on the images, to be presented this week at the United Kingdom's National Astronomy Meeting 2008 in Belfast, the Queen's team will reveal the results of a 10-year search for stars destined to explode in supernovae like the one captured in the new images.
According to a press release on the team's findings, it appears that stars with masses as low as seven times that of the sun can explode. Since the team has yet to find a very massive star that has exploded, they believe the most massive stars either produce faint supernovae or collapse into black holes.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency.
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