Supernova 1987A

SN1987 from Hubble (released on 2 Sept 2010). Click for larger and visit link below for even more. NASA, ESA, K. France (University of Colorado, Boulder), and P. Challis and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

I remember when I heard there was a supernova happening, I was so excited. Then I found out is was in the southern hemisphere well south of my field of view. “Darned the luck”.

Still it was pretty exciting, a star 160,000 light years away in the constellation Dorado ending its life in a collapse that sees the star falls in on itself and rebounds in an enormous explosion so brilliant it easily out-shone everything else in the parent galaxy. The other alternative is electron degeneracy pressure is overwhelmed and now the earth sized core collapse continues so in addition to the bright flash the star winds up so dense light can’t even escape – a black hole. A rather simplified example but pretty awesome to think of just the same.

This supernova was the first seen since 1604 seen by Johannes Kepler. This Blue Supergiant star has been estimated to have been about 15 times the mass of our Sun.

I also think you all need a splash of color today and the pink seems appropriate – why, you ask?

Here’s the Hubblesite press release before I get too worked up :

An international team of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope reports a significant brightening of the emissions from Supernova 1987A. The results, which appear in this week’s Science magazine, are consistent with theoretical predictions about how supernovae interact with their immediate galactic environment.

The team observed the supernova remnant in optical, ultraviolet, and near-infrared light. They studied the interaction between the ejecta from the stellar explosion and a glowing 6-trillion-mile-diameter ring of gas encircling the supernova remnant. The gas ring was probably shed some 20,000 years before the supernova exploded. Shock waves resulting from the impact of the ejecta onto the ring have brightened 30 to 40 pearl-like “hot spots” in the ring. These blobs likely will grow and merge together in the coming years to form a continuous, glowing circle.

“We are seeing the effect a supernova can have in the surrounding galaxy, including how the energy deposited by these stellar explosions changes the dynamics and chemistry of the environment,” said University of Colorado at Boulder Research Associate Kevin France of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy. “We can use these new data to understand how supernova processes regulate the evolution of galaxies.”

Discovered in 1987, Supernova 1987A is the closest exploding star to Earth to be detected since 1604 and it resides in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy adjacent to our own Milky Way Galaxy.

You can read the entire story here