3 ms·
The annotated version gives a bit more context: https://esawebb.org/images/potm2302b/ https://esawebb.org/images/potm2302b/ Essentially the lensed objects show
by joshvm 4y ago
The annotated version gives a bit more context: https://esawebb.org/images/potm2302b/ https://esawebb.org/images/potm2302b/
Essentially the lensed objects show three very slightly different temporal views of the same galaxy. The time differences are pretty short in astronomical time scales - 0, +1 and +3 years (ish) - but since supernovae are extremely transient, it only appears in the T=0 image. In the crops, the supernova is marked between two horizontal bars, it's quite common in "science" images for the object of interest to be relatively unremarkable compared to the bright stuff nearby.
- scld 4y agoThanks for the explanation about the horizontal bars! I mistakenly thought that the brighter spot on the ~1000 days later picture was the supernova and that it was mislabeled.
- joshvm 4y agoIt's also worth considering the fact you can see a point source that's a similar brightness to the host galaxy which probably contains several orders of magnitude more stars. A Type 1A peaks at something like 5 billion times the brightness of the Sun.