In 1987, astronomers witnessed a spectacular event when they spotted a titanic supernova 168,000 light-years away in the Hydra constellation. Designated 1987A (since it was the first supernova detected that year), the explosion was one of the brightest supernova seen from Earth in more than 400 years. The last time was Kepler’s Supernova, which was visible to Earth-bound observers back in 1604 (hence the designation SN 1604).

Since then, astronomers have tried in vain to find the company object they believed to be at the heart of the nebula that resulted from the explosion. Thanks to recent observations and a follow-up study by two international teams of astronomers, new evidence has been provided that support the theory that there is a neutron star at the heart of SN 1604 – which would make it the youngest neutron star known to date.

The studies that describe their respective findings were both published in The Astrophysical Journal. The first, “High Angular Resolution ALMA Images of Dust and Molecules in the SN 1987A Ejecta,” appeared in the November 19th, 2019, issue while the second, “NS 1987A in SN 1987A,” was published in the July 30th, 2020 issue. Both studies represent the culmination of thirty years of research and waiting by astronomers.

Astronomers have long suspected a city-sized neutron star hides within the dusty shroud of SN 1987A. And now, they’re closer than ever to proving their case.

But the extraordinary sight of a nearby supernova lingering in Earth’s night sky isn’t the only thing SN 1987A bestowed upon us. It also gave astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to investigate what triggers supernovae, as well as how such powerful blasts ripple through their surroundings. In fact, we can see the shockwave from SN 1987A still speeding outward today, interacting with clouds of dust that encircle the original site of the cosmic explosion.

We investigate a suspected very massive star in one of the most metal-poor dwarf galaxies, PHL 293B. Excitingly, we find the sudden disappearance of the stellar signatures from our 2019 spectra, in particular the broad H lines with P Cygni profiles that have been associated with a massive luminous blue variable (LBV) star. Such features are absent from our spectra obtained in 2019 with the Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet- and Stable Spectroscopic Observation and X-shooter instruments of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. We compute radiative transfer models using cmfgen, which fit the observed spectrum of the LBV and are consistent with ground-based and archival Hubble Space Telescope photometry. Our models show that during 2001–2011, the LBV had a luminosity L_* = 2.5–3.5 × 10⁶ L_⊙, a mass-loss rate ˙ M = 0.005 − 0.020 M ⊙ yr⁻¹, a wind velocity of 1000 km s⁻¹, and effective and stellar temperatures of T_eff = 6000–6800 and T_* = 9500–15 000 K. These stellar properties indicate an eruptive state. We consider two main hypotheses for the absence of the broad emission components from the spectra obtained since 2011. One possibility is that we are seeing the end of an LBV eruption of a surviving star, with a mild drop in luminosity, a shift to hotter effective temperatures, and some dust obscuration. Alternatively, the LBV could have collapsed to a massive black hole without the production of a bright supernova.

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