A NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of a gaseous ring surrounding the supernova 1987A, which exploded on February 23, 1987 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, an irregular satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. In this image, taken with the European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera (FOC), HST's 0.07 are second resolution reveals clumpy structure in the ring which indicates that the material is not uniformly distributed. The ring is a relic of the stellar explosion that was ejected by the progenitor star several thousand years before the supernova explosion. The ring is a real equatorial structure in the fossil stellar envelope. The ring glows because it was heated to more than 20,000 degrees by radiation from the supernova blast. Because the ring is inclined approximately 43 degrees along the line-of-sight, light emitted from the far edge of the ring arrived at Earth nearly one year after light arrived from forward edge of ring. This delay time allows for an extremely accurate estimate of the ring's physical diameter, which 1.37 light- years. (This estimate is based upon a detailed analysis data collected data over a three year period by NASA/ESA's International Ultraviolet Explorer saetllite). By comparing the ring's physical diameter with the ring's angular diameter of 1.66 arc seconds - as measured quite accurately from the FOC image - astronomers have calculated the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud with unprecedented accuracy, of 169,000 light-years (to within 5%). This false-color image was obtained in the light of doubly ionized oxygen, and then computer reconstructed to bring out additional detail. This photograph was presented to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Philadelphia Pennsylvania on January 16, 1991.
Credits
Photo Credit: NASA and ESA| About The Object | |
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| Object Name | SN 1987A |
| R.A. Position | 05h 35m 28.25s |
| Dec. Position | -69° 16' 13.0" |
| About The Object | |
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| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
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| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
