A new study sheds light on the chemical makeup of the universe. An international team of researchers has stumbled upon an exploding supernova in a distant spiral galaxy using data from the first year of interstellar observations by the James Webb Space Telescope. A recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters offers new infrared measurements of NGC 1566, also known as the Spanish Dancer, one of the brightest galaxies in our cosmic circle. Located about 40 million miles from Earth, the galaxy’s extremely active center has made it a popular object among scientists trying to understand the formation and evolution of star-forming nebulae.

In this case, the scientists were able to observe a type 1a supernova — the explosion of a white carbon-oxygen dwarf, said Michael Tucker, a research fellow at the Ohio State University Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics and one of the study’s co-authors. Researchers studying NGC 156 caught it by chance.

“White dwarf explosions are important to cosmology because astronomers often use them as distance indicators,” Tucker said. Said. “They also produce the vast majority of the iron group elements in the universe, such as iron, cobalt, and nickel.”

The work was made possible by the PHANGS-JWST survey, which was used through a large set of star cluster measurements to create a reference dataset for studying nearby galaxies. Tucker and co-author Ness Miker Chen, a graduate student in astronomy at Ohio State, who led the study, analyzed images of the supernova core to try to determine how certain chemical elements were ejected into the environment after the explosion.

For example, light elements such as hydrogen and helium formed in the Big Bang, but heavier elements can only be created by fusion reactions that occur in supernovas. Understanding how these stellar reactions affect the distribution of iron elements in space could give researchers a deeper understanding of the chemical makeup of the universe, Tucker said.

“When a supernova explodes, it expands and we can see different layers of ejecta that allow us to probe the core of the nebula,” he said. Triggered by a process called radioactive decay, in which an unstable atom releases energy to become more stable, the supernova emits highly active radioactive photons, such as uranium-238. In this case, the study focused on how the cobalt-56 isotope decays into iron-56.

Using data from JWST’s near- and mid-infrared cameras to study the evolution of these emissions, the researchers found that 200 days after the initial event, the supernova eruption was still visible at infrared wavelengths that were impossible to view from the spacecraft. . Soil.

“This is one of those studies that would really matter if our results weren’t what we expected,” he said. “We’ve always assumed that energy is not escaping the ejecta, but before JWST that was just a theory.”

For years it was unclear whether the fast-moving particles produced when cobalt-56 decays into iron-56 seep into the environment or are trapped by magnetic fields produced by supernovae. However, the study, which provides new insights into the cooling properties of supernova emissions, confirms that in most cases the emissions do not go beyond the explosion. According to Tucker, this confirms many of the assumptions scientists have made about how these complex objects worked in the past.

“This study confirms nearly 20 years of science,” he said. “It doesn’t answer all questions, but at least it does a good job of showing that our assumptions are disastrously wrong.”

Future JWST observations will continue to help scientists refine their theories about star formation and evolution, but Tucker said greater access to other image filters could help test them and open up more opportunities to understand the wonders far beyond our own galaxy.