FOR RELEASE: 9:00 am (EDT) September 2, 2004

PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC04-23


A BRIGHT SUPERNOVA IN THE NEARBY GALAXY NGC 2403

The explosion of a massive star blazes with the light of 200 million
Suns in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. The arrow at top right
points to the stellar blast, called a supernova. The supernova is so
bright in this image that it easily could be mistaken for a foreground
star in our Milky Way Galaxy. And yet, this supernova, called SN 2004dj,
resides far beyond our galaxy. Its home is in the outskirts of NGC 2403,
a galaxy located 11 million light-years from Earth. Although the
supernova is far from Earth, it is the closest stellar explosion
discovered in more than a decade. This image was taken on Aug. 17, two
weeks after an amateur astronomer discovered the supernova.

Credit: NASA, ESA, A.V. Filippenko (University of California, Berkeley),
P. Challis (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), et al.

To see and read more, please visit:
http://hubblesite.org/news/2004/23

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MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation
between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

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