James Webb: Telescope reveals new detail in famous supernova [View all]
Source: BBC
James Webb: Telescope reveals new detail in famous supernova
31 August 2023
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent
It's like a celestial pearl necklace.
This is an image of a supernova - an exploded star - taken by the new super space telescope James Webb (JWST).
SN1987A, as it's known, is one of the most famous and studied objects in the southern hemisphere sky.
When the star went boom in 1987, it was the nearest, brightest supernova to be seen from Earth in almost 400 years. And now the $10bn (£8bn) Webb observatory is showing us details never revealed before.
SN1987A is sited a mere 170,000 light-years from us in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy adjacent to our own Milky Way Galaxy.
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Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66670705
Travelling at the speed of light, it would take you almost two years to traverse the central ring of SN1987A (NASA/ESA/CSA/M.Matsuura SA)
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