Mystery solved after 35 years: It happened with exploding supernova

Published 27 February 2024 at 12.19

Domestic. After nearly four decades, scientists can show that a neutron star formed from our most well-studied supernova, SN 1987A. The breakthrough was made possible thanks to the James Webb telescope.

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Supernovae are the spectacular end result when stars with masses eight to ten times that of the Sun collapse. In addition to being the most important sources of chemical elements such as carbon, oxygen, silicon and iron, which are the prerequisites for life, supernovae can also create the most extreme objects in the universe: neutron stars and black holes.

In 1987, supernova 1987A (SN 1987A) exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, located near the Milky Way. It was the first time in four centuries that a supernova became visible to the naked eye, giving astronomers an unprecedented close-up of a supernova explosion.

Although SN 1987A is one of the most studied objects in the sky, the question of what was left after the explosion remains unanswered. Was it a compact neutron star or a black hole? The detection of neutrinos, which are produced in the supernova, indicated that a supercompact neutron star should have formed at the center of SN 1987A. But even after three and a half decades of intensive observations with the best telescopes, no conclusive evidence of such a neutron star has been found – until now.

– Thanks to the amazing resolution and new instruments on JWST, we have for the first time was able to examine the center of the supernova and what was created after the explosion. We now know that there is a compact source of ionizing radiation there, which is likely a neutron star. This was predicted by the explosion models and we did simulations in 1992 that indicated how to observe this, but it was only with JWST that it became possible. However, the details offered several surprises, says Claes Fransson, professor at the Department of Astronomy, Stockholm University and the Oskar Klein Center and the lead author of the study.