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NASA's Great Observatories May Unravel 400-Year Old Supernova Mystery
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Dwarf planet Ceres is shown in these enhanced-color renderings that use images from NASA’s Dawn mission. New thermal and chemicals models that rely on the mission’s data indicate Ceres may have long ago had conditions suitable for life.NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA The dwarf planet is cold now, but new research paints a picture of Ceres hosting a deep, long-lived energy source that may have maintained habitable conditions in the past.
New NASA research has found that Ceres may have had a lasting source of chemical energy: the right types of molecules needed to fuel some microbial metabolisms. Although there is no evidence that microorganisms ever existed on Ceres, the finding supports theories that this intriguing dwarf planet, which is the largest body in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, may have once had conditions suitable to support single-celled lifeforms.
Science data from NASA’s Dawn mission, which ended in 2018, previously showed that the bright, reflective regions on Ceres’ surface are mostly made of salts left over from liquid that percolated up from underground. Later analysis in 2020 found that the source of this liquid was an enormous reservoir of brine, or salty water, below the surface. In other research, the Dawn mission also revealed evidence that Ceres has organic material in the form of carbon molecules — essential, though not sufficient on its own, to support microbial cells.
The presence of water and carbon molecules are two critical pieces of the habitability puzzle on Ceres. The new findings offer the third: a long-lasting source of chemical energy in Ceres’ ancient past that could have made it possible for microorganisms to survive. This result does not mean that Ceres had life, but rather, that there likely was “food” available should life have ever arisen on Ceres.
This illustration depicts the interior of dwarf planet Ceres, including the transfer of water and gases from the rocky core to a reservoir of salty water. Carbon dioxide and methane are among the molecules carrying chemical energy beneath Ceres’ surface.NASA/JPL-Caltech In the study, published in Science Advances on Aug. 20, the authors built thermal and chemical models mimicking the temperature and composition of Ceres’ interior over time. They found that 2.5 billion years or so ago, Ceres’ subsurface ocean may have had a steady supply of hot water containing dissolved gases traveling up from metamorphosed rocks in the rocky core. The heat came from the decay of radioactive elements within the dwarf planet’s rocky interior that occurred when Ceres was young — an internal process thought to be common in our solar system.
“On Earth, when hot water from deep underground mixes with the ocean, the result is often a buffet for microbes — a feast of chemical energy. So it could have big implications if we could determine whether Ceres’ ocean had an influx of hydrothermal fluid in the past,” said Sam Courville, lead author of the study. Now based at Arizona State University in Tempe, he led the research while working as an intern at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which also managed the Dawn mission.
Catching Chill
The Ceres we know today is unlikely to be habitable. It is cooler, with more ice and less water than in the past. There is currently insufficient heat from radioactive decay within Ceres to keep the water from freezing, and what liquid remains has become a concentrated brine.
The period when Ceres would most likely have been habitable was between a half-billion and 2 billion years after it formed (or about 2.5 billion to 4 billion years ago), when its rocky core reached its peak temperature. That’s when warm fluids would have been introduced into Ceres’ underground water.
The dwarf planet also doesn’t have the benefit of present-day internal heating generated by the push and pull of orbiting a large planet, like Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa do. So Ceres’ greatest potential for habitability-fueling energy was in the past.
This result has implications for water-rich objects throughout the outer solar system, too. Many of the other icy moons and dwarf planets that are of similar size to Ceres (about 585 miles, or 940 kilometers, in diameter) and don’t have significant internal heating from the gravitational pull of planets could have also had a period of habitability in their past.
More About Dawn
A division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL managed Dawn’s mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn was a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. JPL was responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Northrop Grumman in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute were international partners on the mission team.
For a complete list of mission participants, visit:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/dawn/overview/
News Media Contacts
Gretchen McCartney
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-287-4115
gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
2025-108
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Last Updated Aug 20, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Hubble and Artificial Intelligence Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities 3D Hubble Models Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary News Hubble News Social Media Media Resources More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Surveys Supernova-Rich Spiral
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the face-on spiral galaxy NGC 1309. ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Galbany, S. Jha, K. Noll, A. Riess Rich with detail, the spiral galaxy NGC 1309 shines in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. NGC 1309 is about 100 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.
This stunning Hubble image encompasses NGC 1309’s bluish stars, dark brown gas clouds, and pearly-white core, as well as hundreds of distant background galaxies. Nearly every smudge, streak, and blob of light in this image is an individual galaxy, some shining through less dense regions of NGC 1309 itself. The only exception to this extragalactic ensemble is a star near the top of the frame identified by its diffraction spikes. The star is positively neighborly at just a few thousand light-years away in the Milky Way galaxy.
Hubble turned its attention toward NGC 1309 several times; previous Hubble images of this galaxy were released in 2006 and 2014. Much of NGC 1309’s scientific interest derives from two supernovae, SN 2002fk in 2002 and SN 2012Z in 2012. SN 2002fk was a perfect example of a Type Ia supernova, which happens when the stripped-down core of a dead star (a white dwarf) explodes.
SN 2012Z, on the other hand, was a bit of a renegade. It was classified as a Type Iax supernova: while its spectrum resembled that of a Type Ia supernova, the explosion wasn’t as bright as expected. Hubble observations showed that in this case, the supernova did not destroy the white dwarf completely, leaving behind a ‘zombie star’ that shone even brighter than it did before the explosion. Hubble observations of NGC 1309 taken across several years also made this the first time astronomers spotted a star system that later produced an unusual supernova explosion of a white dwarf.
Text Credit: ESA/Hubble
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Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
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Last Updated Jul 31, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
Explore This Section Science Uncategorized Helio Highlights: May… Home Framework for Heliophysics Education About Helio Big Idea 1.1 Helio Big Idea 1.2 Helio Big Idea 1.3 Helio Big Idea 2.1 Helio Big Idea 2.2 Helio Big Idea 2.3 Helio Big Idea 3.1 Helio Big Idea 3.2 Helio Big Idea 3.3 Helio Missions Helio Topics Resource Database About NASA HEAT More Highlights Space Math 3 min read
Helio Highlights: May 2025
3 Min Read Helio Highlights: May 2025
A satellite image showing the extent of the Northern Lights during part of the Mother’s Day 2024 solar storms. Credits:
NOAA One year ago, solar storms lit up the night sky. Why?
The Sun is 93 million miles away from Earth, on average. Even though it’s far away, we can still see and feel its effects here. One of the most beautiful effects are the auroras – colorful lights that dance across the sky near the North and South Poles. These are also called the Northern and Southern Lights. They happen when tiny particles from the Sun hit gas molecules in our atmosphere and give off energy.
Sometimes the Sun becomes very active and sends out a lot more energy than normal. When this happens, we can see auroras in places much farther from the poles than normal. In May 2024, around Mother’s Day, the Sun sent powerful solar storms in the direction of Earth. These storms were also called the Gannon Storms, named after Jennifer Gannon, a scientist who studied space weather. The Northern Lights could be seen as far south as Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Mexico, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. The Southern Lights were also visible as far north as South Africa and New Zealand.
Aurora Borealis seen from British Columbia, Canada on May 10, 2024. NASA/Mara Johnson-Groh Scientists who study the Sun and its effects on our solar system work in a field called heliophysics. Their studies of the Sun have shown that it goes through cycles of being more active and less active. Each one of these cycles lasts about 11 years, but can be anywhere from 8 to 14 years long. This is called the Solar Cycle.
The middle of each cycle is called Solar Maximum. During this time, the Sun has more dark spots (called sunspots) and creates more space weather events. The big storms in May 2024 happened during the Solar Maximum for Solar Cycle 25.
On May 8 and 9, 2024, an active area on the Sun called AR3664 shot out powerful solar flares and several huge bursts of energy called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These CMEs headed straight for Earth. The first CME pushed aside the normal solar wind, making a clear path for the others to reach us faster. When all this energy hit our atmosphere, it created auroras much farther from the poles than usual. It was like the Sun gave the auroras a huge power boost!
Eruptions of Solar material into space as seen on May 7 (right) and May 8 (left), 2024. These types of eruptions often come just before a larger Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), including the ones which caused the Mother’s Day solar storms. NASA/SDO Auroras are beautiful to watch, but the space weather that creates them can also cause problems. Space weather can mess up radio signals, power grids, GPS systems, and satellites. During the May 2024 storms, GPS systems used by farmers were disrupted. Many farmers use GPS to guide their self-driving tractors. Since this happened during peak planting season, it may have cost billions of dollars in lost profit.
Because space weather can cause so many problems, scientists at NASA and around the world watch the Sun closely to predict when these events will happen. You can help too! Join local science projects at schools, teach others about the Sun, and help make observations in your area. All of this helps us to learn more about the Sun and how it affects our planet.
Here are some resources to connect you to the Sun and auroras
Lesson Plans & Educator Guides
Magnetic Mysteries: Sun-Earth Interactions
A 5E lesson for high school students to investigate the question of what causes aurora by using Helioviewer to examine solar activity.
Aurora Research and Heliophysics
Learn about aurora, how they form, and the different phases they go through, as well as heliophysics missions that study them.
How Earth’s Magnetic Field Causes Auroras
A 5E middle school lesson where students explore why our planet has a magnetic field (and other planets don’t) and what it is like.
Interactive Resources
Magnetic Earth
Introductory activity where users learn about the magnetic field that surrounds Earth and its role in creating the Northern Lights.
NOAA Aurora
30-Minute Forecast
An interactive aurora map for both hemispheres which allows users to predict the likelihood of auroras at different latitudes.
Webinars and Slide Decks
Space Weather
Basics
A slide deck (41 slides) that offers an elementary introduction to the basic features of space weather and its interactions with Earth’s magnetosphere and various technologies.
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By NASA
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS The United States flag adorns an aluminum plate mounted at the base of the mast, or “head,” of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. This image of the plate was taken on June 28, 2025 (the 1,548th day, or sol, of the mission), by the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera on the end of the rover’s robotic arm.
WATSON, part of an instrument called SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals), was built by Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) in San Diego and is operated jointly by MSSS and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. JPL, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
Learn more about Perseverance’s latest science.
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