Hubble Telescope Reveals Huge Star’s Explosion in Blow-by-Blow Detail

Through a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, three different moments in a far-off supernova explosion were captured in a single snapshot by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA, ESA, STScI, Wenlei Chen (UMN), Patrick Kelly (UMN), Hubble Frontier Fields/Handout via Reuters)

WASHINGTON—About 11.5 billion years ago, a distant star roughly 530 times larger than our sun died in a cataclysmic explosion that blew its outer layers of gas into the surrounding cosmos, a supernova documented by astronomers in blow-by-blow detail.

Researchers on Wednesday said NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope managed to capture three separate images spanning a period of eight days starting just hours after the detonation—an achievement even more noteworthy considering how long ago and far away it occurred.