Chasing Supernovae in the Early Universe

Steven Rodney

Johns Hopkins University

Most stars will end their life with a whisper, gradually shedding outer layers and cooling over many billions of years. A prominent minority, however, will end with an extraordinary bang: a supernova explosion that can be observed across the cosmos. I'll describe how we are using the Hubble Space Telescope to discover some of the earliest supernovae ever seen, and what they can tell us about exploding stars and dark energy.