Supernova: The death of a star

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SUPERNOVA 1987A

In February of 1987 astronomers observing the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy, noticed the sudden appearance of what looked like a new star.

In fact they weren’t watching the beginnings of a star but the end of one and the brightest supernova seen from Earth in the four centuries since the telescope was invented.

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By the next morning news of the discovery had spread across the globe and southern hemisphere stargazers began watching the aftermath of this enormous stellar explosion, known as a supernova.

In the two and a half decades since then, the remnant of Supernova 1987A has continued to be a focus for researchers around the world, providing a wealth of information about one of the Universe’s most extreme events.


The death of a star: Contours of different wavelengths of radio emissions and a Hubble space telescope image of Supernova 1987A combined to provide a unique view of its death throes

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Image of the remnants of 1987A as seen at optical wavelengths with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2011

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A Radio image of the remnant of SN 1987A produced from observations performed with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA)

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A Red/Green/Blue overlay of optical, X-Ray and radio observations made by 3 different telescopes. In red are the 7-mm (44GHz) observations made with the Australian Compact Array in New South Wales, in green are the optical observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope, and in blue is an X-ray view of the remnant, observed by Nasa's space based Chandra X-ray Observatory.

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