A giant galaxy is acting like a massive funhouse mirror, letting us see the exact same exploding star in five different places at once.
April 6, 2026
Original Paper
Supernova 2025wny: High-angular resolution Keck/NIRC2 observations and preliminary lens modeling
arXiv · 2604.02418
The Takeaway
This is the first time astronomers have found a 'superluminous' supernova being naturally magnified and split by gravity. Because the light takes different paths to reach us, this single explosion can be used to precisely measure how fast the entire universe is expanding.
From the abstract
Multiply imaged, gravitationally lensed supernovae are rare but powerful tools for providing independent measurements on cosmological parameters. Supernova (SN) 2025wny ("SN Winny") is the first gravitationally-lensed Type I superluminous supernova and the first lensed supernova in a galaxy-scale system that is suitable for time-delay cosmography studies. In this work, we present high-resolution $K_p$-band adaptive optics imaging of SN Winny obtained with the near-infrared camera (NIRC2) on the