These catastrophically violent events take place at the end of the life of massive stars and can eclipse entire galaxies for a while. short period. While supernovae mark the death of massive stars, they are also responsible for the creation of heavy elements which are incorporated into subsequent generations of stars and planets.
Credits: NASA / ESA Hubble Supernovae are also a useful aid for astronomers who measure distances to distant galaxies. The amount of energy thrown into space by supernova explosions is very uniform, allowing astronomers to estimate their distances from how bright they appear when viewed from Earth. This image - which was created using data from the Wide Hubble's Field Camera 3 - comes from a large collection of Hubble observations of nearby galaxies that host supernovae and a pulsating class of stars known as Cepheid variables. Both Cepheids and supernovae are used to measure astronomical distances, and the galaxies containing both objects provide useful natural laboratories in which the two methods can be calibrated against each other.