Ian Shelton was alone at a telescope in the remote Atacama Desert of

Chile. He had spent three hours taking a picture of the Large Magellanic
Cloud. This wispy galaxy orbits our own, the Milky Way. Suddenly, Shelton
was plunged into darkness. High winds had taken hold of the rolltop door
in the observatorys roof, slamming it shut.

This was maybe telling me I should just call it a night, recalls Shelton. It
was February 23, 1987. And that evening, Shelton was the telescope
operator at Las Campanas Observatory.

He grabbed an 8-by-10 inch glass plate from the telescopes camera. It

had caught an image of the night sky. But it was only a negative. So
Shelton headed off to the darkroom. (Back then, photographs had to be
developed by hand from negatives instead of appearing instantly on a
screen.) As a quick quality check, the astronomer compared the just-
developed picture with one he had taken the night before.

And one star caught his eye. It hadnt been there the previous night. This
is too good to be true, he thought. But to be sure, he stepped outside
and looked up. And there it was a faint point of light that wasnt
supposed to be there.

He walked down the road to another telescope. There, he asked

astronomers what they could say about an object that bright appearing in
the Large Magellanic Cloud, just outside the Milky Way.

supernova 1987a
When SN 1987A was first spotted, it shone as a brilliant point of light near
the Tarantula Nebula (pink cloud) in the Large Magellanic Cloud, as
pictured from an observatory in Chile.
ESO
Supernova! was their response. Shelton ran outside with the others to
double-check with their own eyes. In the group was Oscar Duhalde. He
saw the same thing earlier that evening.

They were witnessing the explosion of a star. This supernova was the
closest seen in nearly four centuries. And it was bright enough to view
without a telescope.