SUPERNOVA 1987A 30 years later
Astronomy doesn’t adhere to humans and their timescales. Cosmic objects typically take thousands, millions, or even billions of years to evolve. But every so often, the universe gifts us an exception. A brilliant explosion that appeared in our sky over 30 years ago is one such present. This cosmic object, Supernova 1987A, marked the death of a massive star. The glowing ember lies 160,000 light-years from Earth in the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). In astronomical terms, that’s next door. This proximity means that our telescopes can resolve small changes in the evolving supernova remnant, changes that would be invisible if the object lay millions of light-years away. “It changes on human timescales,” says Penn State astrophysicist Kari Frank. That uniqueness is what keeps her and the…