Wave of Destruction

This sequence of images from Hubble Space Telescope follows the progress of Supernova 1987A, an exploding star discovered in February 1987. Radiation and debris from the explosion rammed into a cloud of gas and dust that the star had expelled before its death, forming a glowing ring with embedded knots of denser material. These images trace the evolution of that structure, as well as the glowing central cloud of debris, which expands considerably during the nine-year span of these images. [NASA/P. Challis/R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)/B. Sugerman (STScI)]