{"id":352813,"date":"2026-02-23T23:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T23:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/352813\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T23:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T23:27:08","slug":"webb-identifies-supernova-progenitor-star-in-ngc-1637","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/352813\/","title":{"rendered":"Webb Identifies Supernova Progenitor Star in NGC 1637"},"content":{"rendered":"

Using the NASA\/ESA\/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have for the first time identified the progenitor of a nearby supernova \u2014 a red supergiant star cloaked in thick, dust-rich shrouds that made it invisible to previous observatories.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The main image at left shows a combined Webb and Hubble view of the spiral galaxy NGC 1637, with the region of interest in the top right; the remaining three panels show a detailed view of a red supergiant star before and after it exploded; the star is not visible in the Hubble image before the SN 2025pht explosion, but appears in the Webb image; the July 2025 view from Hubble shows the glowing aftermath of the explosion. Image credit: NASA \/ ESA \/ CSA \/ STScI \/ C. Kilpatrick, Northwestern \/ A. Suresh, Northwestern \/ J. DePasquale, STScI.<\/p>\n

The supernova event in question, designated SN 2025pht, was discovered in NGC 1637 on June 29, 2025.<\/p>\n

Astronomers immediately turned their resources to this supernova to learn more about it.<\/p>\n

But Northwestern University astronomer Charlie Kilpatrick and his colleagues instead turned to archives, seeking to use pre-supernova images to identify exactly which star among many had exploded.<\/p>\n

The images of NGC 1637 taken by Webb\u2019s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) in 2024 showed a single red supergiant star located exactly where the supernova now shines.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been waiting for this to happen \u2014 for a supernova to explode in a galaxy that Webb had already observed,\u201d Dr. Kilpatrick said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe combined Hubble and Webb data sets to completely characterize this star for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the reddest, most dusty red supergiant that we\u2019ve seen explode as a supernova,\u201d said Aswin Suresh, a graduate student at Northwestern University.<\/p>\n

This excess of dust could help explain a long-standing problem in astronomy that could be described as the case of the missing red supergiants.<\/p>\n

Astronomers expect the most massive stars that explode as supernovae to also be the brightest and most luminous.<\/p>\n

So, they should be easy to identify in pre-supernova images. However, that hasn\u2019t been the case.<\/p>\n

One potential explanation is that the most massive aging stars are also the dustiest.<\/p>\n

If they\u2019re surrounded by large quantities of dust, their light could be dimmed to the point of undetectability.<\/p>\n

The Webb observations of SN 2025pht support that hypothesis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been arguing in favor of that interpretation, but even I didn\u2019t expect to see it as extreme as it was for SN 2025pht,\u201d Dr. Kilpatrick said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would explain why these more massive supergiants are missing because they tend to be more dusty.\u201d<\/p>\n

The authors also found that the dust surrounding the star is likely rich in carbon \u2014 an unexpected result, since scientists would normally anticipate silicate-dominated dust in such an environment.<\/p>\n

They speculate that this carbon might have been dredged up from the star\u2019s interior shortly before it exploded.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving observations in the mid-infrared was key to constraining what kind of dust we were seeing,\u201d Suresh said.<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s paper<\/a> was published In October 2025 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Charles D. Kilpatrick et al. 2025. The Type II SN 2025pht in NGC 1637: A Red Supergiant with Carbon-rich Circumstellar Dust as the First JWST Detection of a Supernova Progenitor Star. ApJL 992, L10; doi: 10.3847\/2041-8213\/ae04de<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Using the NASA\/ESA\/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have for the first time identified the progenitor of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[882,15441,38025,18,6145,7446,19,15444,17,1024,165457,101423,133,165458,11186,160069,3517,165459,15450],"class_list":["post-352813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-carbon","tag-csa","tag-dust","tag-eire","tag-esa","tag-hubble","tag-ie","tag-ir","tag-ireland","tag-nasa","tag-ngc-1637","tag-red-supergiant","tag-science","tag-sn-2025pht","tag-star","tag-supergiant-star","tag-supernova","tag-type-ii-supernova","tag-webb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116122540077905759","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}