Once it was in orbit, and its optics repaired, SN 1987A was one of the first targets for the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble revealed how a supernova is much more complicated than astronomers ever expected, and helped rewrite the textbooks on exploding stars.
The attached image shows the amazing glowing ring of material surrounding the supernova. The ring has been there for years, but the supernova is illuminating it as the light echo moves through the material energizing the gas. As this ring of light continues to expand, it’ll reveal more details about what the star went through before it exploded.
This image was taken in December 2006, using Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Original Source: Hubble News Release
Few space images are as iconic as those of the Horsehead Nebula. Its shape makes…
It stands to reason that stars formed from the same cloud of material will have…
We go about our daily lives sheltered under an invisible magnetic field generated deep inside…
When the first stars in the Universe formed, the only material available was primordial hydrogen…
On 9 January 2024, the Einstein probe was launched, its mission to study the night…
Anyone familiar with astronomy will know that galaxies come in a fairly limited range of…