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Science 23 February 2007:
Vol. 315. no. 5815, pp. 1103 - 1106
DOI: 10.1126/science.1136351
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Reports

The Triple-Ring Nebula Around SN 1987A: Fingerprint of a Binary Merger

Thomas Morris1,2 and Philipp Podsiadlowski1*

Supernova 1987A, the first naked-eye supernova observed since Kepler's supernova in 1604, defies a number of theoretical expectations. Its anomalies have long been attributed to a merger between two massive stars that occurred some 20,000 years before the explosion, but so far there has been no conclusive proof that this merger took place. Here, we present three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of the mass ejection associated with such a merger and the subsequent evolution of the ejecta, and we show that this accurately reproduces the properties of the triple-ring nebula surrounding the supernova.

1 Department of Astrophysics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RH, UK.
2 Max-Planck Institut für Astrophysik, Garching 85741, Germany.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: podsi{at}astro.ox.ac.uk

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Massive stars in their death throes.
J. J Eldridge (2008)
Phil Trans R Soc A 366, 4441-4452
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)