Supernova 1987A in LMC

One day in 1987, an astronomer by the name of Ian Shelton was making observations of the Tarantula Nebula in Large Magellanic cloud at Las Campanas Observatory, and he noticed something strange on his image. After seeing this, he did something that astronomers have't done for some time, he went outside and looked up.

SN 1987A got as bright as 2.7, the only other recent SN even to come close was 1885A in M31 which got up to mag 6.


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David Bishop
Last modified: Wed Nov 21 08:26:07 EST 2001