JWST First Supernova Discovered

JWST hasn’t been operational long and the public has yet to see more than a few photos from it, yet we think it may have already made its first discovery, a supernova! A supernova is one of the possible death scenarios of a star, wherein it implodes into itself with such force that all of the elements are made at once and everything bounces back from the core, creating some of the most powerful bursts of light we have ever observed. In fact, some supernovae can be even brighter than entire galaxies, though this does not last for long. 

Though this has yet to be confirmed as a supernova, all signs point to it as some were keen to compare and contrast early JWST images with those from Hubble and noticed that a galaxy that looked normal through Hubble suddenly had an extra, but powerful burst of light when JWST observed it. The transient event, located at RA:14:19:30.01 DEC:+52:51:59.9 in the galaxy SDSS J141930.11+525159.3. As of now there only exists an initial filing, as seen below:

“We report on the discovery of an infrared transient in the galaxy SDSS J141930.11+525159.3 from NIRCam images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope on MJD 59752.362583, [Finkelstein et. al, ERS 1345]. We detect a new point source located at RA:14:19:30.01 DEC:+52:51:59.9 after comparing and subtracting archival Hubble Space Telescope ACS images taken in F814W on MJD 55858.193150 from the JWST NIRCam images, confirming the transient nature of the source. We perform preliminary aperture photometry in 6 filters for a single epoch (MJD 59752.362583), giving F115W, F150W, F200W, F277W, F356W, and F444W magnitudes of 23.94 AB, 24.39 AB, 24.60 AB, 24.44 AB, 25.23 AB, and 24.82 AB, respectively. We additionally present photometry at a second epoch (MJD 59758.325694), giving F200W magnitudes of 24.72 AB and F444W magnitudes of 24.98 AB. Based on a spectroscopic redshift of z = 0.284 (Willner et al. 2017, 756, 72), these measurements correspond to an absolute magnitude of about -16.0 in F200W and about -15.5 in F444W, suggesting the transient could be a supernova post-peak.” 

The link for this filing is found here