Overview
- ESO reports that the VLT observed SN 2024ggi just 26 hours after discovery in NGC 3621, about 22 million light years away.
- Spectropolarimetric data revealed axially aligned, elliptical ejecta during the shock-breakout phase, a geometry inferred from polarized light.
- The symmetry axis remained fixed even as the expanding material later appeared more flattened by interactions with surrounding matter.
- The progenitor is identified as a red supergiant with roughly 12–15 solar masses and a radius near 500 times that of the Sun.
- The ultra-early dataset, achieved after a rapid observation request by Yi Yang, enables some explosion models to be ruled out and others refined, with the analysis presented in Science Advances.