Spiral Galaxy NGC 1637 in Eridanus: Supernova Found | Webb & Hubble Telescopes

Spiral Galaxy NGC 1637 in Eridanus: Supernova Found | Webb & Hubble Telescopes

Forty million years ago, a star in a nearby galaxy exploded, spewing material across space and generating a brilliant beacon of light. That light traveled across the cosmos, reaching Earth on June 29, 2025, where it was detected by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae. Astronomers immediately turned their resources to this new supernova, designated 2025pht, to learn more about it. However, one team of scientists instead turned to archives, seeking to use pre-supernova images to identify exactly which star among many had exploded. And they succeeded.

Images of galaxy NGC 1637 taken by the James Webb Space Telescope showed a single red supergiant star located exactly where the supernova now shines. This represents the first published detection of a supernova progenitor by Webb. The results were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“We’ve been waiting for this to happen—for a supernova to explode in a galaxy that Webb had already observed. We combined Hubble and Webb data sets to completely characterize this star for the first time,” said lead author Charlie Kilpatrick of Northwestern University in the United States.

The main image at left shows a combined Webb and Hubble view of spiral galaxy NGC 1637 with the region of interest in the top right. The remaining three panels show a detailed view of a red supergiant star before and after it exploded. The star is not visible in the Hubble image before the explosion, but appears in the Webb image. The July 2025 view from Hubble shows the glowing aftermath of the explosion.

By carefully aligning Hubble and Webb images taken of NGC 1637, the team was able to identify the progenitor star in images taken by Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) in 2024. They found that the star appeared surprisingly red—an indication that it was surrounded by dust that blocked shorter, bluer wavelengths of light.

“It’s the reddest, most dusty red supergiant that we’ve seen explode as a supernova,” said graduate student and co-author Aswin Suresh of Northwestern University.

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, C. Kilpatrick (Northwestern), A. Suresh (Northwestern); Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)
Release Date: Feb. 23, 2026

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