Hubble Finds Rare Progenitor to a Supernova

Archival photographs from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have been used to uncover the progenitor star to a supernova that exploded in 2005. To the surprise of astronomers, the progenitor is a rare class of ultra-bright star that, according to theory, shouldn't explode so early in its evolution.

[Top] This is a 2005 ground-based photograph of the supernova as seen in host galaxy NGC 266, located in the constellation Pisces.

[Bottom Left] This is a 1997 Hubble archival visible-light image of the region of the galaxy where the supernova exploded. The white circle marks a star that Hubble measured to have an absolute magnitude of -10.3. This corresponds to the brightness of 1 million suns (at the galaxy's distance of 215 million light-years).

[Bottom Center] This is a near-infrared-light photo of the supernova explosion taken on Nov. 11, 2005, with the Keck telescope, using adaptive optics. The blast is centered on the position of the progenitor.

[Bottom Right] This is a visible-light Hubble follow-up image taken on September 26, 2007. Note that a bright source near the site of the supernova can be seen in all three panels, but the progenitor star is gone. The Hubble pictures from both epochs were taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

About the data

Hubble images (bottom-left and bottom-right): These images were created from HST data from proposals 6837 : L. Ho (Carnegie Institution of Washington), A. Filippenko (University of California, Berkeley), and W. Sargent (California Institute of Technology); and 11105 A. Gal-Yam (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel). The science team for SN 2005gl comprises: A. Gal-Yam (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel) and D. Leonard (San Diego State University) . Keck image credit (bottom-center) : A. Gal-Yam (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel), D. Leonard (San Diego State University), and D. Fox (Pennsylvania State University). Note: The Keck data were obtained using the Near Infrared Camera 2 (NIRC2) behind the laser-guide-star-assisted adaptive optics system at the Keck II telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, on November 11, 2005. Galaxy NGC 266 image credit (top): The ground-based image of NGC 266 showing SN 2005gl was provided by The Puckett Observatory Supernova World Search Team. Credit: Puckett Observatory