This image contains six boxes with Hubble pictures. The top three boxes show distant galaxies, which are small and somewhat blurry, and lack much detail. The bottom three boxes are the same galaxies, but with the bright point of a supernova explosion. An arrow points to the supernova in each galaxy.

Hubble multiple supernovae

These Hubble images show a series of supernovae ― explosions that occur at the death of massive stars ― detected in distant galaxies. Type 1a supernovae like these have a known brightness that can be used to measure distances to faraway objects.

Credits: NASA and A. Riess (STScI)