Speaker
Description
On September 1, 2025 the Vast Exploration for Nascent, Unexplored Sources program (VENUS) discovered a multiply-imaged supernova (SN) in JWST imaging of the galaxy cluster, MACS1931 (z~0.35). At the site of the lensed images, contemporaneous VLT/MUSE data show Lyman alpha emission from the host, placing the lensed sytem at a spectroscopic redshift = 5.13. We dub this candidate SN Eos – named after the Titan goddess of dawn. The two images of Eos are magnified by ~30x, are nearly simultaneous given their expected time delays (~hours in the rest frame), and are in excellent agreement with an SN IIP in the plateau phase of its light curve evolution in a low-metallicity environment. We present this discovery and our follow-up data, show that SN Eos offers a true test of whether local, low-metallicity SNe IIP are indeed good high-z analogues, and discuss the unique properties of a highly magnified SN II at z > 5. We emphasize that only through an observatory like JWST, paired with a dedicated lensing survey like VENUS, can we push SN discovery and characterization to the Epoch of Reionization.
