Astronomers Witness Star Exploding at the Edge of the Universe

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AAs the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continues to peer into the origins of our universe, it is delivering a steady stream of discoveries back to Earth. One of the latest: the explosive death of a star when most were just beginning to be born.

Last March, a team of astronomers noticed a brilliant burst of gamma rays coming from a surprising place and time, when our 14 billion-year-old universe was only 730 million years old. The burst of radiation came from a supernova. When the team targeted the area with JWST’s infrared camera nearly four months later, they were able to separate the now-dimmed light from the burst of fainter light from the galaxy that housed the dead star. The supernova, designated SN in GRB 250314A, is the most distant supernova ever observed, from the far reaches of the universe and the dawn of time. They published their findings in Astronomy and astrophysics.

Read more: »My personal quest to study supernovae on Mars»

“Almost all supernovas ever studied have been relatively close to us, with a few exceptions so far,” study author Antonio Martin-Carrillo of University College Dublin said in a statement. “When we confirmed the age of it, we saw a unique opportunity to probe how the universe came to be and what types of stars existed and died at the time.”

Strangely enough, the electromagnetic radiation emanating from this supernova matched that of other supernovae observed more locally. Due to the lack of heavier elements like metals in the early universe, astronomers assumed that stars from this period would emit brighter, bluer explosions, but this does not appear to be the case with SN in GRB 250314A.

The one universal constant is that exploration of the early universe continues to yield exciting results.

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Main image: 24K-Production / Shutterstock

• Jake Currie

  Published on January 6, 2026

  Jake Currie is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York.