This new image of the remnant of core-collapse Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A) was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in January 2017.
This Hubble image shows the remnant of SN 1987A within the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The image was taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in January 2017. SN 1987A is located in the center of the image amidst a backdrop of stars. The bright ring around the central region of the exploded star is composed of material ejected by the star about 20,000 years before the actual explosion took place. The supernova is surrounded by gaseous clouds. The clouds’ red color represents the glow of hydrogen gas. The colors of the foreground and background stars were added from observations taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). Image credit: NASA / ESA / R. Kirshner, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation / P. Challis, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
SN 1987A was first seen by observers in the southern hemisphere on February 23, 1987, when a giant star suddenly exploded at the edge of a nearby dwarf galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, approximately 163,000 light-years away.
Because of its relative proximity to Earth, SN 1987A is by far the best-studied supernova of all time.
Hubble has been on the front line of observations of this supernova since 1990, accumulating hundreds of images.
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of SN 1987A and to check how its remnant has developed, the Hubble science team took another image of the distant explosion in January 2017, adding to the existing collection.
“The 30 years’ worth of observations of SN 1987A are important because they provide insight into the last stages of stellar evolution,” said Dr. Robert Kirshner, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Back in 1990, Hubble was the first to see the event in high resolution, clearly imaging the main ring of gas about a light-year in diameter.
It also discovered the two fainter outer rings, which extend like mirror images in an hourglass-shaped structure.
Even today, the origin of these structures is not yet fully understood.
However, by observing the expanding remnant material over the years, Hubble helped to show that the material within this structure was ejected 20,000 years before the actual explosion took place.
Its shape at first surprised astronomers, who expected the dying star to eject material in a spherical shape, but faster stellar winds likely caused the slower material to pile up into ring-like structures.
The initial burst of light from SN 1987A illuminated the rings.
They slowly faded over the first decade after the explosion, until the shock wave of the supernova slammed into the inner ring in 2001, heating the gas to searing temperatures and generating strong X-ray emission.
Hubble’s observations of this process shed light on how supernovae can affect the dynamics and chemistry of their surrounding environment, and thus shape galactic evolution.
