This galaxy recently hosted a catastrophically violent explosion

This latest image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features an irregularly shaped galaxy and its spiral arms. Located over 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pisces, the IC 1776 galaxy recently hosted a catastrophically violent explosion - a supernova.

The supernova was discovered in 2015 by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search, a robotic telescope that scans the night sky in search of short-lived astronomical phenomena such as supernovae.

The aftermath of this specific supernova, SN 2015ap, was studied by Hubble during two different observing programmes, both aimed at combing through the debris left by the supernova explosions to better understand these energetic events.

📷 This NASA/ESA @HUBBLE_space Telescope image shows swirling galaxy IC 1776. IC 1776 recently played host to a catastrophically violent explosion — a supernova — which was discovered in 2015 👉 https://t.co/wE6dmk7SnU pic.twitter.com/EZmOKz0bgY

— ESA (@esa) September 4, 2023

A variety of telescopes and observatories scan the night sky regularly and automatically follow up on the detection of phenomena such as supernovae to obtain early measurements of their brightnesses and spectra.

By combining early and later observations, astronomers can gain a better understanding of the nature of supernovae and the systems that gave rise to these cosmic cataclysms in the first place.