Hidden ‘destined’ star revealed by James Webb Space Telescope could solve decades-old mystery

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed a hidden “doomed” star that could help solve huge astrophysical mysteries.

The star is a massive red supergiant star, and JWST photographed it just before it exploded into a fiery supernova. In theory, most supernovae should be caused by massive red supergiants, but they are rarely observed. The latest JWST observations, described in a new study published Wednesday (October 8) in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, add weight to the idea that these giants are often hidden by clouds of dust.

“We’ve been trying to determine exactly what red supergiant explosions look like for decades,” study lead author Charlie Kilpatrick, a research assistant professor who studies massive stars at Northwestern University in Illinois, said in a statement. “Thanks to JWST, we now finally have high-quality data and infrared observations that allow us to say exactly what type of red supergiant exploded and what its immediate environment was like.”

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Near the end of its life, a star the size of the Sun expands to become a red giant, and then becomes a supernova. Red supergiants are massive stars on the verge of exploding, typically hundreds or thousands of times the size of the Sun.

The automatic all-sky search for supernovae detected a supernovae for the first time in a newly photographed supergiant star in June. The supernova, officially named SN 2025pht, comes from a galaxy called NGC 1637 and is located 38 million light-years from Earth, which is pretty close for anything in the universe. The authors of the new study identified the supergiant’s source star (its ancestor) by comparing historical Hubble Space Telescope data with new JWST images of NGC 1637 taken before and after the explosion.

Researchers like Kilpatrick suggest that the heaviest aging stars are the dustiest, which may block out the light. This possible explanation is based on new JWST observations. According to the statement, the star shined about 100,000 times brighter than the sun, but the researchers estimated that its dust was so thick that this light was more than 100 times dimmer.

The dust was also particularly effective at blocking light in shorter blue wavelengths. Fortunately, JWST’s powerful infrared detection allowed it to detect longer red wavelengths, providing an unprecedented detailed look at a supergiant star on the verge of exploding into a supernova.

“SN2025pht is surprising because it appeared much redder than almost every other red supergiant star we’ve ever seen explode as a supernova,” Kilpatrick said. “This indicates that previous explosions may have been much brighter than we thought, as we did not have the same quality of infrared data that JWST can currently provide.”