Supernova 1987a
Depicts: SN 1987a, The Large Magellanic Cloud
Copyright: George Sonneborn (Goddard Space Flight Center), Jason Pun (NOAO), the STIS Instrument Definition Team, and NASA
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The STIS spectrograph viewed the entire inner ring in far-ultraviolet light,
spreading it into a spectrum. The Earth's atmosphere completely blocks
ultraviolet radiation from reaching the Earth's surface, hence astronomers
can
study the ultraviolet universe only from orbiting telescopes. The dark
square
in this image is where the spectrum was processed to remove the emission from
hydrogen in the Earth's outer atmosphere.
Last Update: 1 September 2019