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20th birthday of the brightest supernova in history

The supernova 1987A and Hubble's observations of it helped rewrite the textbooks in the chapter on star explosions * Newton also photographed it in the X field and revealed a 10-fold increase in its brightness in this field since the year 2000

Only 20 years ago, astronomers observed one of the most powerful star explosions seen in the last 400 years - before the invention of modern telescopes. This is the supernova 1987A that exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud and provided a lot of data to astronomers. This actually happened 163 thousand years ago, but it took light all that time to reach us.

As soon as the Hubble Space Telescope entered its orbit, one of the first objects it photographed was this supernova. Hubble revealed that the supernova is much more complex than astronomers had previously estimated, and helped rewrite the textbooks on all the chapters related to stellar explosions.

The image shows the luminous ring of material surrounding the Hospernova. The ring has been there for years, but the supernova lights it up and the materials spread by the explosion add energy to the gas. As the ring continues to expand, it reveals more details about the structure of the star before it exploded. The people of the Hubble Scientific Center managed to take the picture back in December 2006, with the advanced camera for surveys - the one that broke down in January 2007 and will be repaired, if at all, in December 2008.

The supernova SN1987A as photographed by Newton
The supernova SN1987A as photographed by Newton
Another image of the supernova was taken by the Newton Space Observatory, which studies space in the X-ray field. In this area of ​​the spectrum, SN1987A is particularly impressive. It shines brighter than all the other X-ray sources in its vicinity, and is 10 times brighter than it was in Newton's previous photograph - in 2000. The X-rays we see are created when the shock waves of the expanding supernova collide with the material surrounding it. The data collected by Newton will help scientists understand how the remnants that remain after the supernova are formed, and eventually it will also be possible with Newton's help to reveal the neutron star at its center.

For the news in Universe Today

6 תגובות

  1. Spectacular picture, is this a black hole? Because a supernova is the explosion of a supergiant star with an almost infinite mass density. Tell me with which telescope the Hubble image was taken. I don't think Intergall or Spitzer? This ring is an adsorption disk, it is a stream of material coming from the bodies closest to a black hole, it reminds me of the spiral water stream that leads the water to the sewer, unlike the adsorption disk, the water cannot stay for a long time outside the sewer and the adsorption disk, yes, at the end of its life, it ignites and emits short-wavelength x-radiation, and then It affects the spectrum in a completely different area. In short, after the emission of x-rays, it is possible to identify the location of a black hole

  2. Avi!
    "The people of the Hubble Scientific Center managed to take the picture back in December 2008"
    We haven't gotten there yet...

  3. I'm sorry I can't respond to all your demands, I also have to work, I don't make a living from the site as you probably know, because there is one hand between the advertisers and the big sites to eliminate the small and medium ones. As long as I get paid, I can't work on the site full time.

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