- To see a star right as it explodes in a supernova is extremely rare. Luckily, researchers combing through the archives of the Hubble Space Telescope’s observational data from 2010 have spotted imagery of an exploding star from some 11 billion years ago, lurking behind a galaxy cluster — making it the first time such an event has been observed from so early in the universe.
- “It is quite rare that a supernova can be detected at a very early stage, because that stage is really short,” said Wenlei Chen, who is the lead author of an accompanying study published in the journal Nature and a researcher at the University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy, in a NASA statement.
