James Webb Space Telescope reveals new details of famous supernova

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) once again captures the wonders of space. This time, it has been revealed in exquisite detail one of the most studied objects in the night sky. 

The JWST has taken an image of a supernova, known as SN1987A. When the star exploded in 1987, it was the nearest, brightest supernova to be seen from Earth in almost 400 years.

It is located 170,000 light years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy adjacent to our own Milky Way Galaxy and pit has captured attention as it provides an insight of what happens when big stars die. 

In the picture, the rings represent bands of gas and dust thrown out by the star as it dies. One of these rings is like a string of pearls, which comprises material ejected about 20,000 years before the final event.

The Webb also reveals additions not present in earlier images from the likes of the Hubble Space Telescope.

"We're able to see new hotspots emerging outside the ring that has previously been illuminated," explained Dr Roger Wesson from Cardiff University, UK.

"In addition, we see emission from molecular hydrogen in the ring that was not necessarily expected and something only JWST could have revealed with its superior sensitivity and resolution," he told BBC News.

In the image, there is a central structure which looks like a keyhole, formed from gas and dust ejected by the explosion of the star. The dust is so dense, the Webb can't see the star remnant. The remnant is an extremely compact object made up of neutron particles and measuring just a few tens of kilometres across.

Astronomers think the star was around 20 to 30 times as massive as our Sun - big enough to produce the explosion but not at its stage in life.

The image at the top of this page comes from Webb's main camera, its Near-Infrared Camera or NIRCam. 

The Webb's uses spectrometers, the instruments that split up the light coming from objects into their component colours. This reveals the chemistry, temperature, density and velocity of the targets under study.

Observations of SN1987A using Webb's Near Infrared Spectrometer, or NIRSpec, will appear in a published report shortly which is expected to contain further, exciting revelations about this remarkable supernova.