Hot Dust

Massive clouds of dust fill the space around Supernova 1987a in this composite image from several telescopes. The dust, seen in millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths by the ALMA telescope in Chile, forms a reddish-orange cloud at the center of the image. It's surrounded by a ring of gas (shown in visible and X-ray light), which was expelled by the giant star long before it exploded as a supernova. The central dust formed as atoms that were created in the center of the star and then expelled in the explosion cooled and stuck together. The dust may disperse into the surrounding galaxy (the Large Magellanic Cloud) where it could someday be incorporated into new stars and planets. Supernova 1987a, which exploded in 1987 as seen from Earth, was the brightest supernova in Earth's sky in several centuries. [ALMA/NASA/et al]