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JWST Confirms First Supernova Progenitor: Dust-Shrouded Red Supergiant Behind SN2025pht

Precise alignment of JWST with Hubble data identified a heavily obscured red supergiant at the supernova’s position.

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, an international team has captured the most detailed glimpse yet of a doomed star — marked in the box above — before it exploded. The discovery may help solve the decades-old mystery of why massive red supergiants rarely explode. Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Charles Kilpatrick, Aswin Suresh
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Overview

  • The peer-reviewed result, published October 8 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, reports JWST’s first confirmed pre-explosion progenitor detection.
  • Researchers matched a single infrared point source to the later blast site by registering images with 36 reference stars across JWST and Hubble datasets.
  • The progenitor radiated roughly 100,000 times the Sun’s luminosity, yet its visible light was suppressed by more than a factor of 100 by circumstellar dust.
  • Spectral clues indicate carbon-rich dust around the star rather than the usual oxygen-rich silicates, pointing to late-stage mixing before the Type II supernova.
  • The finding helps explain why many massive red supergiants have gone undetected in optical searches and sets up broader infrared hunts with JWST and the upcoming Roman telescope.