The Hubble Telescope records a Type Ia supernova explosion in the galaxy LEDA 22057, 650 million light-years away, with new insights into the evolution of white dwarfs
This new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxy LEDA 22057, located 650 million light-years away in a group of twins. A spectacular supernova explosion occurred in LEDA 22057. The supernova, named SN 2024PI, was first discovered in January 2024 by an automated survey. This survey surveys the entire northern half of the night sky every two days and has recorded more than 10,000 supernovae to date.
In this image, the supernova appears as a pale blue dot just below and to the right of the galactic core. It contrasts nicely with the faint, airy spiral arms of LEDA 22057. Snapped about six weeks after its discovery, SN 2024PI appears much dimmer compared to its peak brightness.
SN 2024PI is classified as a type Ia supernova. This type requires a wonderful object called a white dwarf, a crystallized core of a star with a mass less than eight solar masses. When a star of this size exhausts the supply of hydrogen in its core, it swells into a red giant, becoming cold, bloated and luminous. Over time, pulsations and stellar winds cause the star to shed its outer layers, leaving behind a white dwarf and a colorful planetary nebula. The surface temperature of white dwarfs can exceed 100,000 degrees and they are very dense - the mass of the Sun, more or less, is compressed into a sphere the size of the Earth.
Almost all the stars in the Milky Way will one day evolve into white dwarfs - this is the fate that awaits the Sun in about five billion years - but not all of them will explode as Type Ia supernovae. For this to happen, the white dwarf must be part of a binary star system. When a white dwarf absorbs material from a companion star, the white dwarf can become too massive to support itself. This results in an explosion of runaway nuclear fusion that destroys the white dwarf in a supernova explosion visible from distant galaxies.
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