Published22 minutes ago
Scientists say they have solved the mystery of what lies at the heart of a celebrated cosmic explosion.
In February 1987, a star exploded in a neighbouring galaxy. It was visible from Earth for four months, shining with the power of 100 million suns.
There was so much debris, even the most powerful telescopes could not confirm what remained at its heart.
New results confirm it is a neutron star, so dense that a teaspoon of it would weigh 10 million tonnes.
BBC Sky at Night presenter Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock said that the research team had “solved a murder mystery”.
“It is about the death of a star and the mystery has been what lies in the shrouds of dust around what remains,” she said.
The explosion was of a huge star, 20 times the mass of our Sun, a so-called blue supergiant. Its life ended in spectacular style in a process called a supernova, prosaically called SN 1987A, by astronomers. It was the first supernova to have been visible to the naked eye for 400 years, and was from a star whose details had been captured and recorded by astronomers before it exploded.
Dr Aderin-Pocock once worked on a project to solve the puzzle of SN 1987A, which she says was figuratively, as well as literally, a big star.
“The fact that it was visible gave it a celebrity status outside the world of science. And SN 1987A is also very close to the heart of astronomers because it
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