NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has found a new Supernova that exploded over 10 billion years ago. The previous record for farthest Supernova was just 350 million years earlier and found just three months ago by a separate team led by David Rubin of the U.S. Energy Department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
The new discovery, Supernova UDS10Wil, nicknamed SN Wilson after American President Woodrow Wilson. SN Wilson belongs to a special class called Type Ia supernovae. These bright beacons are prized by astronomers because they provide a consistent level of brightness that can be used to measure the expansion of space. They also yield clues to the nature of dark energy, the mysterious force accelerating the rate of expansion.
The discovery was part of a three mission begun in 2010 to study Supernovae form the earliest times to determine how they have changed since the birth of the universe.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., conducts Hubble science operations. The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc., in Washington operates STScI.
For images of SN Wilson visit http://hubblesite.org/news/2013/11
For more information on this project, please visit NASA.gov
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