Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2020

T his artist’s illustration of Super- nova 1987A shows the dusty inner regions of the exploded star’s remnants (red), in which a neutron star might be hiding. This inner region is contrasted with the outer shell (blue), where the en- ergy from the supernova is collid- ing (green) with the envelope of gas ejected from the star prior to its powerful detonation. [NRAO/ AUI/NSF, B. Saxton] 21 SPACE CHRONICLES SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2020 lapsed center of the star. But when scientists could not find any evi- dence for that star, they started to wonder whether it subsequently collapsed into a black hole instead. For decades the scientific commu- nity has been eagerly awaiting a signal from this object that has been hiding behind a very thick cloud of dust. Recently, observations from the ALMA radio telescope provided the first indication of the missing neutron star after the explosion. Ex- tremely high-resolution images re- vealed a hot “blob” in the dusty core of SN 1987A, which is brighter than its surroundings and matches the suspected location of the neu- tron star. “We were very surprised to see this warm blob made by a thick cloud of dust in the supernova remnant,” said Mikako Matsuura from Cardiff University and a mem- ber of the team that found the blob