Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2026

25 ASTRO PUBLISHING tion. SN 2024ggi is located in the galaxy NGC 3621 in the direction of the constellation Hydra ‘only’ 22 mil- lion light-years away, close by in astronomical terms. With a large tel- escope and the right instrument, the international team knew they had a rare opportunity to unravel the shape of the explosion shortly after it happened. “The first VLT observa- tions captured the phase during which matter accelerated by the ex- plosion near the centre of the star shot through the star’s surface. For a few hours, the geometry of the JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2026 T his image shows the location of the super- nova SN 2024ggi in the NGC 3621 galaxy. It was taken on 11 April 2024, just 26 hours after the ini- tial detection of the su- pernova, with the FORS2 instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Among other capabilities, FORS2 allows to obtain spectra in polarised light. This technique, called spectro-polarimetry, provides crucial information about the shape of the explosion even though it appears as a single point as seen from Earth. [ESO/Y. Yang et al.]