On February 23 of the following year, 1987, a supernova went off right overhead. SN 1987 A appeared in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the few galaxies visible to the unaided eye—and only from the Southern Hemisphere. It was the first unaided-eye supernova since 1604, and among astronomers it prompted a worldwide viewing party. It wasn’t a Type Ia, the explosive kind of supernova that Phillips and Suntzeff had studied. It was a Type II, the implosive kind.
