A glimpse of ancient dying stars
Astronomers have revealed faint images of the two oldest and most distant supernovae to be discovered to date.
When a massive star effectively runs out of nuclear fuel, it explodes in a supernova - hurling much of its material into space.
The scientists described in the journal Nature how they gathered images of the exploding stars by monitoring the same galaxies over five years.
They used multiple images to pick out supernovae in the distant Universe.
The furthest two supernovae the team found occurred about 11 billion years ago.
Mark Sullivan, an astronomer from the University of Oxford in the UK, was one of the authors of the study. He explained that these stars exploded about 2.5 billion years after the Big Bang.
“As a point of reference, the universe is currently about 13.5 billion years old,” said Dr Sullivan.
