Credit: NASA, ESA, K. France (University of Colordo, Boulder, USA), and P. Challis and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA)

This image shows the entire region around supernova 1987A. The most prominent feature in the image is a ring with dozens of bright spots. A shock wave of material unleashed by the stellar blast is slamming into regions along the ring's inner regions, heating them up, and causing them to glow. The ring, about a light-year across, was probably shed by the star about 20,000 years before it exploded.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo1030a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License