Supernova SN 1987A was studied with the James Webb Space Telescope.

An international team of astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to conduct mid-infrared observations of the nearby supernova SN 1987A. The results of the observation campaign, published on February 21 on the preprint server arXiv, shed further light on the nature of this supernova. Supernovae (SNEs) are powerful, bright stellar explosions that can help us better understand the evolution of stars and galaxies. Astronomers classify supernovae into two groups based on their atomic spectra: Type I and Type II. The spectra of type I stars do not contain hydrogen, but the spectra of type II stars have hydrogen spectral lines. SN 1987A is located approximately 168,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and was first discovered in late February 1987. It was the closest supernova observed in nearly 400 years, since Kepler’s supernova in 1604. Previous studies have shown that SN 1987A is a type II supernova that ignited rapidly and reached an apparent magnitude of about 3.0. Due to their proximity, supernovae have been the subject of numerous observations documenting their evolution into supernova remnants (SNRs). One of the latest campaigns to observe SN 1987A was carried out in mid-2022 by a team of astronomers led by Patrice Boucher of the University of Paris-Saclay in France. Scientists used the MIRI JWST instrument to study the morphology and composition of this supernova. His MIRI images taken by Boucher’s team show SN 1987A’s equatorial ring (ER), bright and 2.0 arc seconds in diameter. In addition, a vast nebula is observed around a cavity with an angular diameter of about 30 arc seconds surrounding the supernova. The data obtained by MIRI allowed astronomers to create a spatial map of the temperature and dust mass of the region covering the epicenter of the supernova explosion. The total mass of the dust was measured to be 0.000028 solar masses, which was 10 times the mass reported in previous studies. Research shows that emergency room temperatures are highly uneven. At the mid-infrared wavelengths studied, the infrared radiation from the eastern side of the ring was found to be slightly weaker than that from the western side. This suggests that the dust originated in the eastern region. Observations also showed that infrared radiation extends beyond ER SN 1987A. This finding may indicate that the shock wave passed through the ER and affected the circumstellar environment on a larger scale.