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A time-lapse created by astronomer Yvette Cendes shows the Supernova 1987A shock wave expanding and projecting into debris.
Yvette Cendes, Dunlap Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto
Astronomers were captivated by Supernova 1987A – the death of a supergiant star in the Great Magellanic Cloud, about 168,000 light-years away from the night – since its appearance in the night sky in 1987.
Supernova 1987A remains the brightest supernova that humans have seen since Kepler's supernova in 1604. It is also the first supernova observed since the invention of the telescope. It was first seen by Ian Shelton of the University of Toronto and Telescope Operator Oscar Duhalde on February 24, 1987.
About 30 years after the discovery of the supernova, Yvette Cendes, an astrophysicist graduated from the University of Toronto and the Leiden Observatory and a regular writer from Discover, decided to create a time frame showing the consequences of the supernova. She compiled the data collected over 25 years, from 1992 to 2017.
"It's literally the best view we have of what's happening as a result of a supernova explosion," Cendes said in an email.
This time frame shows the expanding Supernova 1987A shock wave, breaking the debris that surrounded the original star before it exploded. Cendes and his team created the time-lapse using supernova radio observations made with the CSIRO Australia compact telescope network at the Paul Wild Observatory in New South Wales, Australia.
Their research, published in The Astrophysical Journal, also shows that the expanding supernova remnant is a torus, which means it has the shape of a donut.
Cendes and his team were also able to confirm that the Supernova 1987A shockwave had reached a staggering speed of 621 miles / second (1,000 km / second). They discovered that this acceleration was due to the expansion of the torus growing from a denser region of debris to a less dense region – "The physics of classical shock waves!", Said Cendes.
This article originally appeared on discovermagazine.com.
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