Astronomers now know what became of a star that exploded in 1987, close enough for the bright light of the supernova to be visible in the night sky.
With Betelgeuse stubbornly refusing to explode anytime soon, our best chance to study the explosive death of a massive star is SN 1987a, a rapidly expanding cloud of gassy, dusty cosmic debris 160,000 light years away. SN 1987a is the only supernova that’s been visible with the unaided eye in the last 400 years, and astronomers have spent decades watching its aftermath unfold. But so far, astronomers haven’t been able to spot the burned-out, collapsed core of the dead star that should be slowly cooling in the center of the spreading debris cloud. READ MORE FROM INVERSE
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