The James Webb Space Telescope has helped scientists solve a mystery that’s been puzzling them for decades
SPACE
It may look like the Eye of Sauron, but the tiny purple-blue sphere in the image above is actually an incredibly dense neutron star surrounded by stellar debris. The image marks the moment an international team of astronomers found the neutron star hidden inside a giant supernova that exploded 37 years ago.
Named Supernova (SN) 1987A, the exploded star is the most studied supernova and the brightest one in 400 years. For a few months before it faded, it could even be seen with the naked eye from Earth. But what remained hiding at its centre has been a source of mystery for almost four decades.
Supernovae form when a star over 8-10 times more massive than the Sun collapses, resulting in a spectacular explosion. The collapsed core often turns into a smaller neutron star (a body made of the densest matter in the Universe) or a black hole.
However, no compact object had ever been found within SN 1987A, which is in the Large Magellanic Cloud, despite signs that a neutron star had formed. The most significant clue was that neutrinos (unimaginably small subatomic particles) produced by the supernova were detected by instruments on Earth the day before the explosion was seen on 23 February 1987.
A dust cloud produced by the explosion blocked visible light from the supernova’s centre, obscuring what was behind and leading to the biggest unsolved problem in the study of SN 1987A. But new research
