ESO’s Very Large Telescope captured an unprecedented early snapshot of supernova SN 2024ggi, revealing an elongated, olive-shaped shockwave just a day after discovery.
This artist’s impression shows a star going supernova.
Photo Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) captured a rare early view of a supernova's explosion, including the shape of its expanding shock wave. The star, SN 2024ggi, erupted in April 2024 in the galaxy NGC 3621 about 22 million light-years away. Observations just a day after discovery revealed that the blast was elongated – an olive-like shape rather than spherical. This first-of-its-kind snapshot provides new clues about how massive stars die.
According to media reports, the supernova was first detected on April 10, 2024, and the VLT began follow-up observations the next day. Using the FORS2 instrument for spectropolarimetry, astronomers measured the polarisation of the star's light. Although the supernova appeared as a point of light, its polarization pattern revealed details of the explosion's shape. This rapid spectropolarimetric snapshot captured the shock-breakout phase – the moment the explosion's blast wave punched through the star's surface – a phase normally too brief to study.
According to the recent study published in Science Advances, analysis of the FORS2 data revealed that the early blast was indeed olive-shaped, flattening as it expanded while retaining the same axis of symmetry. This points to a global mechanism driving the explosion along that axis.
Interestingly, when the blast interacted later with older gas shed by the star, the explosion's axis seemed to shift-maybe because a companion star had affected the geometry. Already, these results rule out some models of supernovae and fill in details of others, sharpening the picture of how stars die.
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