[BRIEF NOTE] SN 1987A, twenty years ago

[rfmcdonald]

It was only when I saw the front page of science magazine Discover that I remembered that this year is the 20th anniversary of Supernova 1987 A, the first supernova observed by modern astronomers since Kepler's Supernova in 1604. SN 1987A's unfortunate progenitor star was Sanduleak -69° 202a, an unstable blue supergiant star located some 168 thousand light years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud that died just as Homo sapiens was evolving on Earth. Visible only in the Southern Hemisphere, SN 1987A's discovery and subsequent researches produced much much new data for astronomers and physicists alike, providing confirmation for everything from models of neutrino behaviour to accurate gauges for intergalactic distances.