Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2023

44 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2023 ASTRO PUBLISHING by NASA/ESA Bethany Downer Three faces of evolving supernova in early Universe F ive panels are shown. The larger left panel shows the portion of the galaxy cluster Abell 370 where the multiple images of the supernova appeared, which is shown in four panels labelled A through D on the right. These panels show the loca- tions of the multiply imaged host galaxy after a supernova faded and the different colours of the cooling supernova at three different stages in its evolution. [NASA, ESA, STScI, Wenlei Chen (UMN), Patrick Kelly (UMN), Hubble Frontier Fields] T hree different moments in a far-off supernova explosion were captured in a single snapshot by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The progenitor star exploded more than 11 billion years ago, when the Universe was less than a fifth of its current age of 13.8 bil- lion years. This is the first detailed look at a supernova at such an early time in the Universe’s evolution. The data could help scientists learn more about the formation of stars and galaxies in the early Universe. This observation was possible thanks to the phenomenon called gravita- tional lensing, as first predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativ- ity. In this case, the light took three different paths through the cosmic lens of the massive galaxy cluster