Supernova 1987A: When the Sky Exploded and We Watched
In 1987, the night lit up with the death of a star. The whole world watched, and for once, we didn’t feel so far from the universe’s edge. Sadly, in this day and age, there are few things that can unite us across oceans, across borders, and across belief, but a shared sky is one of them.
In the winter of 1987, that sky we all look up at did something rare.
It flickered, then blazed. The afterglow of a star’s death shimmered through the void, carrying a secret it had held for 168,000 years. It arrived with a soft blooming light in the southern hemisphere…quiet, but undeniable. The universe doesn’t need to put on a show to get our attention, it just needs to go about its business and we can marvel at it all the same.
It was called Supernova 1987A, and it changed everything.
The Whisper That Became a Boom
Most stars die quietly, they puff out into red giants, gently shed their outer shells, and fade into the darkness of space, but others go violently, in final flashes of brilliance that ripple through galaxies.
This one did both.
The star that became Supernova 1987A had a name that didn’t exactly roll off the tongue and I’m not even sure how to say it out loud if I’m being honest with you: Sanduleak -69° 202. A blue supergiant, which is unusual even in the cosmic lineup, it lived in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small little satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way.
It had been burning for millions of years, fusing hydrogen to helium, helium to carbon, building heavier and heavier elements in its core until it could no longer hold itself up…and then it collapsed.
When stars fall inward, they do so with a ferocity that predators could admire. The core crumples, rebounds, and detonates outward in a shockwave of unimaginable energy, it’s the final act of a life lived hot and fast. This happens all the time, but 1987A was different because we were watching.
One of the mind-bending things about space that always makes me feel a certain type of small is that the light we saw in 1987 didn’t begin its journey that year. It had been traveling across space since the end of the Paleolithic era. When the photons from that collapsing star finally kissed our telescopes, we had already gone from fire to satellite dishes.
We weren’t meant to see it, yet, somehow, we did. Because it was the closest supernova observed since 1604, it gave scientists the rarest gift of all: a chance to study a star’s death in real time. Well…in time that’s as close to our own timeline as possible anyway.
Detectors in Japan, the United States, and the Soviet Union caught the arrival of neutrinos (tiny, nearly massless particles) several hours before the light reached us. These ghostly messengers were the first to tell us that a cosmic event had happened, and it was the first time we had ever caught neutrinos from a supernova.
The universe had beckoned with particles, and we had finally learned to listen.
In Chile, where the night sky wraps around the desert like a velvet blanket, people stepped outside and saw the glow. It was faint, a soft pulse, yet it was real, a point of light that hadn’t been there the night before. People who look skyward like me, in search of something greater in this life, cried. Telescopes swiveled as data poured in, images bloomed, and across the world, people looked up and felt…something. Some of them felt awe, some felt fear, maybe the thrill of standing at the edge of an invisible frontier. The death of that star had happened so long ago, and yet here we were, its final breath unfolding before us.
Supernova 1987A wasn’t just an astronomical event, it was an emotional one; a beautiful reminder of our tininess, our temporariness, and our hunger to know more in a universe that doesn’t sit still long enough for us to catch up with it.
A Scientific Playground
The explosion left behind a ringed structure that puzzled and delighted astronomers. Not one ring, but three…a central glowing loop and two fainter outer ones, like cosmic ripples frozen mid-motion. These rings are still expanding, still glowing, still teaching us new things to this day.
Scientists believe they were formed by the interaction between the supernova shockwave and material the star had ejected before it exploded. But why the symmetry or the perfect spacing? Why this star? The truth of it today is that we just don’t know. Every time we point a telescope at it (and we have, with nearly every major one on Earth and in orbit) we find something new. From Hubble’s early photographs in the 1990s to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)’s recent images of the cooling dust, we’re watching a stellar corpse reshape the space around it…and we’re still not done.
One of the biggest questions around 1987A is where’s the core? In most supernovae, the collapsed core becomes a neutron star: a dense, rapidly spinning remnant the size of a city but heavier than the Sun. Oddly enough though, we haven’t found it. Some believe it’s there, hidden behind dust, while others wonder if it collapsed all the way into a black hole. A few suggest it could be something stranger, a quark star, a more exotic form of matter that theory predicts but nature hasn’t confirmed yet. It remains one of the most tantalizing cosmic mysteries; we saw a star explode, but its heart is missing.
Every child who has stared through a telescope since 1987 has unknowingly pointed it at a sky shaped by this event. The Hessdalen Lights may dazzle the atmosphere, Sprites and Blue Jets may dance above our storms, and The Tunguska Explosion may haunt our forests, but Supernova 1987A reminded us that the true firestorms come from far beyond, and we can watch them.
In fact, you can still see remnants of that starlight with the right gear. A decent backyard telescope can bring the faint echo of 1987A to life. This Celestron 21049 PowerSeeker 127EQ Reflector Telescope is an excellent option for amateur astronomers who want to glimpse the cosmos with more than wonder.
What It Gave Us
It’s easy to think of science as cold, filled with charts, numbers, and hypotheses that are never ending, but Supernova 1987A gave us wonder. It gave us a moment when the sky spoke and we stopped to listen for once.
It showed us the life cycle of stars in motion and confirmed long-held theories about neutrinos and core-collapse supernovae. It sparked debates about stellar evolution and cosmic dust. It connected observatories, amateurs, and schoolchildren across the globe.
It gave us a question that is still unfolding.
Read More Star Stories:
What Happens When a Star Dies? The Science and Poetry of Stellar Death
Feeling Worthless? Here’s Why the Odds of You Existing Are the Most Beautiful Miracle
The Invisible Symphony: How the Universe Flickers Through Our Lives Without Us Knowing
What the Heck Is a Black Hole Bomb (And Should We Be Worried)?
When the Future Rewrites the Past: The Quantum Eraser Paradox
If we’ve learned anything from Supernova 1987A, it’s that the cosmos is not silent. The universe hums, pulses, and every so often, it explodes. The sky will speak again some day as another supernova will light the darkest corners. Another star will collapse, and when it does, perhaps we’ll be a little more ready.
I’ll always remember 1987A anytime I look up.
