Steward Observatory Professor Brenda Frye & Her Students Discover a Lensed Supernova & Confirm the Hubble Tension
In a series of papers, Brenda Frye shows how gravitational lensing can be used to solve the greatest puzzle facing astronomy today.
Today, NASA features research from Steward Observatory Associate Astronomy Professor Brenda Frye that looks at one of the most distant supernovas ever to be seen: SN H0pe. The supernova, which Brenda and her team discovered with the James Webb Space Telescope, has been hailed as “the supernova that could save the Universe.” Brenda’s studies use gravitational lensing to interrogate the Hubble Constant: the rate at which the Universe is expanding.
"The supernova was named SN H0pe since it gives astronomers hope to better understand the universe's changing expansion rate." - Brenda Frye
Especially remarkable in this series of six papers is the involvement of undergraduate student researchers from the Department of Astronomy. The student contributions ranged from constructing lens models and doing spectroscopic analysis to estimating photometric shifts. Students at Steward Observatory often have exceptional hands-on experiences handling instrumentation and processing data for world-class research projects. “Being a student at Steward I always had a special appreciation for the department's role in helping to run and develop observatories for the astronomical community,” says Nick Foo, a student researcher for the studies. “For instance, this work is directly based on images taken from the NIRCam instrument aboard JWST which was designed and built here at Steward observatory.”
Reagan Leimbach, another student researcher, recalls the first time she looked at the SNH0pe spectra. “I remember opening the image file, sitting back in my chair, and looking at it for a few moments because there was so little noise in the spectra,” she says. “It was like looking at a beautiful painting.”