"Supernova 1987A" is what we call the explosion that became visible from Earth on Feb 23, 1987. The final collapse of a nearby-ish star, it was the first supernova since 1604 that human stargazers could see with unaided eyes. It was nearby enough to be seen in giant underground neutrino detectors, which caught (hours before the visible-light event) a wave of ghostly subatomic particles that emerged directly from the collapsing core. It remains the only supernova neutrino burst ever detected. For a few months in 1987 it was the biggest story in all of astronomy, nuclear, particle physics.
For a few months in 2022, we retold that story on Twitter, in the "pretend it's happening right now" mode pioneered by RealTimeWWII and similar feeds. I pulled the archived tweets down when Twitter's ownership and ethics took an abrupt turn. This is the complete tweet archive, reformatted and searchable for your enjoyment.
(I recommend "browse, sort by oldest first" if you want to relive the real-time experience. Please visit my lab web page or @BenMonreal@mastodon.social.)
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