The discovery is the tip of the iceberg for gravitationally lensed supernovas that could help us better understand the expansion of the universe.
, the Very Large Telescope, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, the Liverpool Telescope and the Nordic Optical Telescope.
Intriguingly, the four images of the supernova warped by the gravitational lens were not all equal in brightness. Two of the images, designated A and C, were brighter than expected by more than four and two times, respectively. Goobar's team suggest that this could be caused by smaller 'microlensing' events within the lensing galaxy that further magnified the supernova's light.
Images of SN Zwicky captured with the Zwicky Transient Facility , Very Large Telescope and W. M. Keck Observatory . The resolving power of Keck Observatory's NIRC2 instrument and adaptive optics system revealed a rare, quadruply-lensed supernova. Microlenses are smaller gravitational lenses created by individual stars or even planets, and in the case of SN Zwicky the additional microlensing effects could reveal clues as to the distribution of masses of stars in the core of the lensing galaxy. Astronomers suspect that conditions in the center of galaxies allow the formation of a larger number of massive stars than normal, and these massive stars would be the most likely candidates for the microlenses.
"Not only is SN Zwicky magnified by the gravitational lens, but it also belongs to a class of supernova that we call '
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