\tScience & Exploration<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t09\/12\/2025
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The NASA\/ESA\/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has confirmed the source of a super-bright flash of light known as a gamma-ray burst, generated by an exploding massive star when the Universe was only 730 million years old. For the first time for such a remote event, the telescope provided a detection of the supernova\u2019s host galaxy. Webb\u2019s quick-turnaround observations verified data taken by telescopes around the world that had been following the gamma-ray burst since it onset, which occurred in mid-March.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGRB 250314A Pull-out (NIRCam image)<\/a><\/p>\n With this observation, Webb<\/a> also broke its own record: The\u00a0previous chart-topping supernova<\/a>\u00a0existed when the Universe was 1.8 billion years old.<\/p>\n \u201cOnly Webb could directly show that this light is from a supernova<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a collapsing massive star,\u201d\u00a0said Andrew Levan, the lead author of one of two new papers in Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters and professor at Radboud University in N\u0133megen, Netherlands, and the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.\u00a0\u201cThis observation also demonstrates that we can use Webb to find individual stars when the Universe was only 5% of its current age.\u201d<\/p>\n While a gamma-ray burst typically lasts for seconds to minutes, a supernova rapidly brightens over several weeks before it slowly dims. In contrast, this supernova brightened over months. Since it exploded so early in the history of the Universe, its light was stretched as the cosmos expanded over billions of years. As light is stretched, so is the time it takes for events to unfold. Webb\u2019s observations were intentionally taken three and a half months after the gamma-ray burst ended, since the underlying supernova was expected to be brightest at that time.<\/p>\n \u201cWebb provided the rapid and sensitive follow-up we needed,\u201d\u00a0said Benjamin Schneider, a co-author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille in France.<\/p>\n Gamma-ray bursts are incredibly rare. Those that last a few seconds may be caused by two neutron stars, or a neutron star and a black hole colliding. Longer bursts like this one, which lasted around 10 seconds, are frequently linked to the explosive deaths of massive stars.<\/p>\n \tImmediate, nimble investigation of the source<\/p>\n The first alert chimed on 14 March 2025. The news of the gamma-ray burst from a very distant source came from the SVOM mission (Space-based multi-band astronomical Variable Objects Monitor), a Franco-Chinese telescope that launched in 2024 and was designed to detect fleeting events.<\/p>\n Within an hour and a half, NASA\u2019s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory pinpointed the X-ray source\u2019s location on the sky. That enabled subsequent observations that would pin down the distance for Webb. Eleven hours later, the Nordic Optical Telescope on the Canary Islands in Spain was queued up and revealed an infrared-light gamma-ray burst afterglow, an indication that the gamma ray might be associated with a very distant object. Four hours later, the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope in Chile estimated the object existed 730 million years after the Big Bang.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are only a handful of gamma-ray bursts in the last 50 years that have been detected in the first billion years of the Universe,\u201d\u00a0Andrew\u00a0said.\u00a0\u201cThis particular event is very rare and very exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n \tShockingly similar to nearby supernovae<\/p>\n Since this is the earliest, farthest supernova to be detected to date, researchers compared it to what they know in great detail\u00a0\u2013 modern, nearby supernovae. The two turned out to be very similar, which surprised them.<\/p>\n Why? Little is still known about the first billion years of the Universe. Early stars likely contained fewer heavy elements, were more massive, and led shorter lives. They also existed during the Era of Reionisation, when gas between galaxies was largely opaque to high-energy light.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went in with open minds,\u201d\u00a0said Nial Tanvir, a co-author and a professor at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom.\u00a0\u201cAnd lo and behold, Webb showed that this supernova looks exactly like modern supernovae.\u201d\u00a0Before researchers can determine why such an early supernova is similar to nearby supernovae, more data is needed to pinpoint tiny differences.<\/p>\n \tFirst look at supernova\u2019s host galaxy<\/p>\n \u201cWebb\u2019s observations indicate that this distant galaxy is similar to other galaxies that existed at the same time,\u201d\u00a0said Emeric Le Floc\u2019h, a co-author and astronomer at the CEA Paris-Saclay (Commissariat \u00e0 l’\u00c9nergie Atomique et aux \u00c9nergies Alternatives) in France. Since the galaxy\u2019s light is blended into a few pixels, making the galaxy look like a reddened smudge, what we can learn about it is still limited. Seeing it at all is a breakthrough.<\/p>\n The researchers have already laid plans to reenlist Webb in the international effort to learn more about gamma-ray bursts emitted by objects in the early Universe. The team has been approved to observe events with Webb and now have a new aim: to learn more about galaxies in the distant Universe by capturing the afterglow of the gamma-ray bursts themselves. \u201cThat glow will help Webb see more and give us a \u2018fingerprint\u2019 of the galaxy,\u201d Levan said.<\/p>\n This research team observed supernova GRB 250314A with a rapid-turnaround Director’s Discretionary Time program (#9296<\/a>).<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tSupernova GRB 250314A (artist’s concept)<\/a><\/p>\n More information<\/b><\/p>\n Webb<\/a>\u00a0is the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space. Under an international collaboration agreement, ESA provided the telescope\u2019s launch service, using the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Working with partners, ESA was responsible for the development and qualification of Ariane 5 adaptations for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace. ESA also provided the workhorse spectrograph\u00a0NIRSpec<\/a>\u00a0and 50% of the mid-infrared instrument\u00a0MIRI<\/a>, which was designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the University of Arizona.<\/p>\n Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).<\/p>\n Release on esawebb.org<\/a><\/p>\n Release on NASA website<\/a><\/p>\n