21 million lightyears from Earth, in a galaxy far, far away, a star with a mass at least eight times larger than our sun exploded, creating a supernova. The explosion occurred when the star, located in the Pinwheel Galaxy, ran out of nuclear fuel and collapsed. The supernova was first discovered by Japanese astronomer Koichi Itagaki in May 2023, sparking interest from scientists around the world who sought to study this rare phenomenon.
Among those intrigued by the supernova were three UMass Lowell undergraduates: Jordan Orenberg, Ian Davis, and Jacob Medin. These physics majors were funded by the Kennedy College of Sciences’ Science Discoveries program to study the supernova during the summer after their first year of college. Under the guidance of Physics Assoc. Prof. Silas Laycock and assistance from Physics Ph.D. student Sayantan Bhattacharya ’21, they learned how to operate the UMass Lowell Schueller Observatory’s powerful telescope to capture images of the supernova.
The students collaborated with the nonprofit organization Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston to obtain more images of the supernova and used AstroImageJ software to analyze them. Over three months, they tracked the magnitude of the supernova by observing its brightness and temperature changes. Their data is now available to the public through
