An image of the remnants of supernova 1987A (SN 1987A) captured by the James Webb Space Telescope caught new details and never-before-seen structures such as the central one, which has a shape like a keyhole, and near it crescent-shaped formations. The NIRCam instrument proves again that it can see where other instruments have seen little or nothing in the decades since the supernova was detected. The aim is always to understand what happens in the years following a supernova to what remains of the star that exploded and to the materials ejected into interstellar space.
The image (NASA, ESA, CSA, Mikako Matsuura (Cardiff University), Richard Arendt (NASA-GSFC, UMBC), Claes Fransson (Stockholm University), Josefin Larsson (KTH). Image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)) shows SN 1987A as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument.
On the night between February 23 and 24, 1987, the supernova was sighted in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way’s dwarf satellite galaxies. Over the next decades, increasingly sophisticated telescopes were trained on that supernova’s remnant, including various space telescopes. The remnants of that supernova were among the first targets observed in 1990 by the Hubble Space Telescope, which captured images of the main ring around the remnants of the exploded star and two fainter outer rings.
After many years of monitoring with the Hubble Space Telescope but also Spitzer, a new instrument capable of seeing even better in infrared started observing SN 1987A. Its relative proximity to Earth made it the first with a brightness comparable to the so-called Kepler supernova seen even with the naked eye in 1604.
The instruments of the 20th and 21st centuries are offering study possibilities unthinkable to the great Kepler and his fellow astronomers of his time in the various electromagnetic bands. It was taken for granted that SN 1987A would be one of the targets for the James Webb Space Telescope’s observations. The results are interesting from the beginning.
The large ring formed by materials ejected from the progenitor star millennia before the supernova, the outer rings, and the bright structures formed by the shock wave of the supernova that hit the ring had already been studied during the previous decades. The James Webb Space Telescope also discovered similar bright structures on the outer side of the ring, indicating that the shock wave is hitting materials in an outer area.
A neutron star probably formed after the supernova but it’s really hard to see it directly in the midst of all that material. Observations conducted over time with the James Webb Space Telescope, also with the MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) instrument, will add to the already existing wealth of data to discover other secrets related to the remains of SN 1987A.
