NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has observed a supernova that exploded when the universe was only 730 million years old — the earliest detection of its kind to date. Webb’s crisp near-infrared images also allowed astronomers to locate the supernova’s faint host galaxy. The telescope took these quick-turn observations July 1 in support of an international group of telescopes that detected a super bright flash of light known as a gamma-ray burst in mid-March. NASA’s missions are part of a growing, worldwide network watching for fleeting changes in the skies to solve mysteries of how the universe works.
美国国家航空航天局 (NASA) 的詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜观测到一颗超新星在宇宙只有 7.3 亿岁的时候爆炸，这是迄今为止最早探测到的此类超新星。韦伯清晰的近红外图像也使天文学家能够定位超新星微弱的宿主星系。该望远镜于 7 月 1 日进行了这些快速观测，以支持一个国际望远镜组，该组在 3 月中旬探测到了被称为伽马射线暴的超亮闪光。美国宇航局的任务是不断发展的全球网络的一部分，该网络监视天空中短暂的变化，以解开宇宙如何运作的奥秘。
With this observation, Webb also broke its own record: The previous chart-topping supernova exploded when the universe was 1.8 billion years old.
通过这一观察，韦伯也打破了自己的记录：之前排名第一的超新星在宇宙 18 亿岁的时候爆炸。
“Only Webb could directly show that this light is from a supernova — a collapsing massive star,” said Andrew Levan, the lead author of one of two new papers in Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters and a professor at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. “This observation also demonstrates that we can use Webb to find individual stars when the universe was only 5% of its current age.”
“只有韦伯可以直接证明这种光来自超新星——一颗正在塌缩的大质量恒星，”《天文学和天体物理学快报》上两篇新论文之一的主要作者、荷兰奈梅亨拉德堡德大学和英国华威大学的教授安德鲁·莱文说。 “这一观察结果还表明，当宇宙年龄只有当前年龄的 5% 时，我们可以使用韦伯来寻找单个恒星。”
While a gamma-ray burst typically lasts for seconds to minutes, a supernova rapidly brightens over several weeks before it slowly dims. In contrast, this supernova brightened over months. Since it exploded so early in the history of the universe, its light was stretched as the cosmos expanded over billions of years. As light is stretched, so is the time it takes for events to unfold. Webb’s observations were intentionally taken three and a half months after the gamma-ray burst ended, since the underlying supernova was expected to be brightest at that time.
虽然伽马射线爆发通常持续几秒到几分钟，但超新星会在几周内迅速变亮，然后慢慢变暗。相比之下，这颗超新星在几个月内变亮了。由于它在宇宙历史的早期就爆炸了，它的光随着宇宙数十亿年的膨胀而被拉伸。随着光线被拉长，事件发生所需的时间也会被拉长。韦伯的观测是在伽马射线爆发结束三个半月后特意进行的，因为预计当时潜在的超新星将是最亮的。
“Webb provided the rapid and sensitive follow-up we needed,” said Benjamin Schneider, a co-author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille in France.
“韦伯提供了我们所需的快速而敏感的后续行动，”法国马赛天体物理学实验室的合著者、博士后研究员本杰明·施奈德说。
Gamma-ray bursts are incredibly rare. Those that last a few seconds may be caused by two neutron stars, or a neutron star and a black hole colliding. Longer bursts like this one, which lasted around 10 seconds, are frequently linked to the explosive deaths of massive stars.
伽马射线爆发极其罕见。那些持续几秒钟的现象可能是由两颗中子星，或者一颗中子星和一个黑洞碰撞引起的。像这次持续约 10 秒的较长爆发通常与大质量恒星的爆炸性死亡有关。
The first alert chimed March 14. The news of the gamma-ray burst from a very distant source came from the SVOM mission (Space-based multi-band astronomical Variable Objects Monitor), a Franco-Chinese telescope that launched in 2024 and was designed to detect fleeting events.
第一个警报于 3 月 14 日响起。来自非常遥远的源头的伽马射线爆发的消息来自 SVOM 任务（天基多波段天文可变物体监视器），这是一台中法望远镜，于 2024 年发射，旨在探测转瞬即逝的事件。
Within an hour and a half, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory pinpointed the X-ray source’s location on the sky. That enabled subsequent observations that would pin down the distance for Webb.
一个半小时内，美国宇航局尼尔·盖尔斯·斯威夫特天文台就确定了 X 射线源在天空中的位置。这使得随后的观测能够确定韦伯的距离。
Eleven hours later, the Nordic Optical Telescope on the Canary Islands was queued up and revealed an infrared-light gamma-ray burst afterglow, an indication that the gamma ray might be associated with a very distant object.
十一小时后，加那利群岛的北欧光学望远镜排队等候，发现了红外光伽马射线爆发余辉，这表明伽马射线可能与一个非常遥远的物体有关。
Four hours later, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile estimated the object existed 730 million years after the big bang.
四小时后，欧洲南方天文台位于智利的甚大望远镜估计该物体在大爆炸后 7.3 亿年就存在了。
“There are only a handful of gamma-ray bursts in the last 50 years that have been detected in the first billion years of the universe,” Levan said. “This particular event is very rare and very exciting.”
莱文说：“过去 50 年中，在宇宙最初 10 亿年中检测到的伽马射线爆发屈指可数。” “这一特殊事件非常罕见，也非常令人兴奋。”
Since this is the earliest, farthest supernova to be detected to date, researchers compared it to what they know in great detail — modern, nearby supernovae. The two turned out to be very similar, which surprised them.
由于这是迄今为止探测到的最早、最远的超新星，研究人员将其与他们详细了解的现代近超新星进行了比较。两人竟然非常相似，这让他们很惊讶。
Why? Little is still known about the first billion years of the universe. Early stars likely contained fewer heavy elements, were more massive, and led shorter lives. They also existed during the Era of Reionization , when gas between galaxies was largely opaque to high-energy light.
为什么？关于宇宙最初的十亿年，人们仍然知之甚少。早期恒星可能含有较少的重元素，质量较大，寿命较短。它们也存在于再电离时代，当时星系之间的气体对于高能光来说基本上是不透明的。
“We went in with open minds,” said Nial Tanvir, a co-author and a professor at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. “And lo and behold, Webb showed that this supernova looks exactly like modern supernovae.” Before researchers can determine why such an early supernova is similar to nearby supernovae, more data is needed to pinpoint tiny differences.
“我们以开放的心态参与进来，”英国莱斯特大学教授、合著者尼尔·坦维尔说。 “你瞧，韦伯表明这颗超新星看起来和现代超新星一模一样。”在研究人员确定为什么这样的早期超新星与附近的超新星相似之前，需要更多的数据来查明微小的差异。
“Webb’s observations indicate that this distant galaxy is similar to other galaxies that existed at the same time,” said Emeric Le Floc’h, a co-author and astronomer at the CEA Paris-Saclay (Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives) in France. Since the galaxy’s light is blended into a few pixels, making the galaxy look like a reddened smudge, what we can learn about it is still limited. Seeing it at all is a breakthrough.
“韦伯的观测表明，这个遥远的星系与同时存在的其他星系相似，”法国巴黎萨克雷原子能委员会（Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives）的合著者、天文学家埃默里克·勒弗洛克（Emeric Le Floc'h）说。由于星系的光线混合成几个像素，使星系看起来像一个红色的污点，我们对它的了解仍然有限。看到它就是一个突破。
The researchers have already laid plans to reenlist Webb in the international effort to learn more about gamma-ray bursts emitted by objects in the early universe. The team has been approved to observe events with Webb and now have a new aim: to learn more about galaxies in the distant universe by capturing the afterglow of the gamma-ray bursts themselves. “That glow will help Webb see more and give us a ‘fingerprint’ of the galaxy,” Levan said.
研究人员已经制定了计划，让韦伯重新参与国际努力，以更多地了解早期宇宙中物体发射的伽马射线爆发。该团队已获准与韦伯一起观测事件，现在有了一个新目标：通过捕捉伽马射线爆发本身的余辉来更多地了解遥远宇宙中的星系。 “这种光芒将帮助韦伯看到更多，并为我们提供银河系的‘指纹’，”莱文说。
This research team observed supernova GRB 250314A with a rapid-turnaround Director’s Discretionary Time program .
该研究小组通过快速周转的主任自由时间计划观测了超新星GRB 250314A。
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜是世界上首屈一指的太空科学天文台。韦伯正在解开太阳系中的谜团，展望其他恒星周围的遥远世界，并探索宇宙的神秘结构和起源以及我们在其中的位置。韦伯是由 NASA 及其合作伙伴 ESA（欧洲航天局）和 CSA（加拿大航天局）领导的一项国际计划。