SN 2020fqv in NGC 4568

Astronomers recently witnessed supernova SN 2020fqv explode inside the interacting Butterfly galaxies, located about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. Researchers quickly trained NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on the aftermath. Along with other space- and ground-based telescopes, Hubble delivered a ringside seat to the first moments of the ill-fated star's demise, giving a comprehensive view of a supernova in the very earliest stage of exploding. Hubble probed the material very close to the supernova that was ejected by the star in the last year of its life. These observations allowed researchers to understand what was happening to the star just before it died, and may provide astronomers with an early warning system for other stars on the brink of death.

About the colours

These images are a composite of separate archival exposures acquired by the WFPC2 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope and more recent ground-based optical data from the Lick Observatory. Several filters were used to sample narrow wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: LCO/BGreen: LCO/VOrange: LCO/rRed: LCO/iLuminosity: HST/F606W

About the data

The HST observations include those from program 05446 (G. Illingworth)