Black background filled with stars. Bright-red clouds fill the upper half of the image. Supernova 1987a is at image center. It is a bright point of light surrounded by a bright, pink-white ring. two red rings circle the central ring and form a figure eight. Two bright stars appear like diamonds. One along the upper ring, and the other along the lower red rings.

Hubble Supernova 1987A

This new image of the supernova remnant SN 1987A was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in January 2017 using its Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Since its launch in 1990 Hubble has observed the expanding dust cloud of SN 1987A several times and this way helped astronomers to create a better understanding of these cosmic explosions. Supernova 1987A is located in the centre of the image amidst a backdrop of stars. The bright ring around the central region of the exploded star is composed of material ejected by the star about 20 000 years before the actual explosion took place. The supernova is surrounded by gaseous clouds. The clouds’ red colour represents the glow of hydrogen gas. The colours of the foreground and background stars were added from observations taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2).

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