A supernova may have been spotted by the Webb Telescope

As the data returned by the Webb Space Telescope is sifted through by scientists and astronomers, the space observatory continues to break new ground with every passing day.

There is no evidence that one group was able to capture evidence of the telescope's first record supernova, or to put it simply, the death of a star, as one group is now suggesting.

Among the reasons it's exciting is that we're able to detect transients with Webb, which is something JWST wasn't designed to do,' Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer Mike Engesser told Inverse. 

As one of the things we show we can do on an ad hoc basis, this is an example. Within a galaxy some three million light years away from Earth, Engesser and his team discovered an extraordinarily bright object. 

There was a galaxy that they observed twice over five days apart, and during the period they observed it, it dimmed, a hallmark of an interstellar supernova that was occurring during a recent epoch.

The data we have is not sufficient for us to make a definitive conclusion, but the data we have matches the characteristics of a supernova pretty closely, so it is at least a very good candidate,' Engesser concluded.

The Webb observations are giving us new insights into supernovae's environment during their super late phases that we did not previously have.

Research around the world has praised the earliest findings of the Webb Space Telescope, with NASA officials admitting it is performing better than expected.

As Engesser concluded, 'if we can detect new things, then we can do this fast-turnaround target of opportunity proposals, where we detect something and then say, 'Okay, interrupt everything else. We want to observe this thing right now. 

As soon as we have a nice repertoire [of supernovae] built up, it is very worthwhile to make these time-sensitive observations of super-high-redshift supernovae.'

source:comic-book