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It's interesting, mildly, to me at least, that William Shatner apparently described space as stark, black and ugly with good ol' earth being its only saving grace!

Neutrinos from the explosion of Supernova 1987A in the 160,000 light yrs distant Large Magellanic Cloud, were detected at 07:35:35 UT February 24, 1987.

Thus at 5:35 am Feb. 25, 1987 in Brisbane Australia which is ten hours ahead of UT, I was walking in darkness up the garden path to get into my car and drive to work, when a bright light preceded by a very brief flash came on not far above the southern horizon, since airplanes come in to land at Brisbane Airport on that vector I thought an incoming aircraft had turned his landing lights on.

It is a fairly long walk to the carpark and by the time I got to my car the light had not moved as it would have if it were a plane .. I at once formed the notion a supernova had taken place in the LMC, in subsequent days the new star became much brighter until at best it was the same reddish color as the star Arcturus though somewhat brighter, it faded in a time span of about three weeks.

Kepler’s Supernova in 1604 came upon the heels of Tycho’s Supernova that lit up Cassiopeia in 1572. These supernovae sent shock waves into the intelligentsia of Europe, which firmly believed in the Aristotelian notion of an immutable universe outside the orbit of the moon. Tycho Brahe took a parallax measurement of the 1572 supernova, proving that it could not be an atmospheric phenomenon. In fact, the supernova shone well beyond the moon’s orbit. Shortly thereafter Kepler’s Supernova in 1604 seemed to drive home the point all over again.

Moreover, Tycho Brahe measured the distance of a comet in 1577, also finding it to be farther away than the moon. Aristotelians wanted to believe comets were gases burning in the atmosphere, but once again, Tycho threw cold water on the idea of Aristotle’s immutable universe.

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