Hubble captures three different moments in far-off supernova explosion in one picture: Check it out

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured three different moments in a far-off supernova explosion - all in one snapshot. The progenitor star exploded when the Universe was less than a fifth of its current age of 13.8 billion years, making this the first detailed look at a supernova at such an early time in the Universe's evolution.

This has been possible through a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, which is used by astronomers to study very distant and very faint galaxies. First predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity, this phenomenon happens when a large distribution of matter, such as a galaxy cluster, sits between Earth and a distant light source. As space is warped by massive objects, the light from the distant object bends as it travels to us and we see a distorted image of it, according to NASA.

Here, the light took three different paths through the cosmic lens of Abell 370 - a galaxy cluster containing several hundred galaxies - bending and magnifying the light from the more distant supernova located behind the cluster. The warping also produced multiple images of the explosion over different time periods that all arrived at Hubble simultaneously.

In the above image, the top box shows a portion of the galaxy cluster Abell 370 while the box-within-the-box marks the area where the distant supernova was multiply lensed.

How it started ➡️ How it’s goingThese images demonstrate Webb’s remarkable ability to resolve faint stars in nearby dwarf galaxy Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte (WLM). On the right is Webb’s brand new image, and on the left is Spitzer’s view: https://t.co/ha4Wv7cBJK pic.twitter.com/9V6ppr4hoe

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) November 9, 2022

Astronomers found this supernova by sifting through the Hubble data archives, looking for transient events. They now plan to observe even more distant supernovae using the James Web Space Telescope (JWST).