ExploraTour: A Peek into the Lives of the Stars


the Anglo-Australian Obseratory/Royal Observatory Edinburgh

Supernova 1987A.

These pictures show a star exploding. The explosion is called a supernova .

The pictures were taken about ten years ago on February 23, 1987. In the first picture you can see the star before the explosion. It is not very bright. In the second picture, you can see the explosion. It is so bright that you could go out and see it in the night sky without a telescope.

This was the first such explosion in 384 years to be visible without a telescope. The exploding star, called a supernova, was a million times brighter than our sun if both objects would have been placed at the same distance from the Earth.

The explosion actually took place 170,000 years ago (about the time Cavemen were living on Earth) but we did not see it until 10 years ago. Light took all that time to reach the Earth from the place far away in deep space where the star exploded.


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