James Webb Space Telescope

Anyone remember this happening in 1987? I don’t, this is my first time reading about it
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It was a young, hot, bright blue star, what they call a blue supergiant, twinkling in the dwarf galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud. But there are many such stars, and there was nothing terribly unusual about it. No reason to give it a second look.


Until it blew.


Supernova 1987A was the brightest exploding star seen in the past 400 years. It was literally a blast from the past: The light from the supernova “blazed with the power of 100 million suns,” as NASA put it, and traveled for 160,000 years before reaching Earth and thrilling astronomers on Feb. 23, 1987.

The new “star” in the night sky could be seen with the naked eye for months before fading.
In the decades since, scientists have wondered what, exactly, was left behind in that violent explosion.

Theorists advanced two possibilities: a black hole or an ultradense object known as a neutron star.


A new paper published Thursday in the journal Science, based on observations by the James Webb Space Telescope, claims to have resolved the debate, saying there are compelling signs of a neutron star hiding in the explosion’s debris field.


Neutron stars have been identified before, but, if the latest report holds up to further scrutiny, this is by far the youngest, freshest such object even seen. It is still cooling down. For astrophysicists, it’s like being present at the creation of something rare and exotic.


“Neutron stars are common, but we haven’t seen any one being born from a star,” said Claes Fransson, an astronomer at Stockholm University and lead author of the new report……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2024/02/22/supernova-1987a-webb-telescope-neutron-star/