This image shows the entire region around <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/supernova_1987A" class="extiw" title="en:supernova 1987A">supernova 1987A</a>. The most prominent feature in the image is a ring with dozens of bright spots. A shock wave of material unleashed by the stellar blast is slamming into regions along the ring's inner regions, heating them up, and causing them to glow. The ring, about a light-year across, was probably shed by the star about 20,000 years before it exploded.
NASA, ESA, K. France (University of Colordo, Boulder), and P. Challis and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
2010-09-02
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