A Letter From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

Sometime during his vacation in Guatemala this week, Staff Writer Michael Lemonick will unpack his amateur astronomer's 4-in. reflecting telescope, set it on its tripod and focus low on the southern horizon. His target: the pinprick of light from Supernova 1987A, the exploding star that is the subject of his cover story in this week's issue. Lemonick, who lives in Princeton, N.J., has made a hobby of stargazing for the past two years. "I usually set up the telescope in my backyard, but Princeton is just too far north to see 1987A. If you travel all the way to Chile, you can see it high in the sky -- I'm hoping that in Central America, I can catch a glimmer of it."

To prepare for the cover, Lemonick, along with Reporter-Researchers David Bjerklie and Carol Johmann, pored over a mountainous stack of scientific findings that had accumulated in the three weeks following the first sighting of the supernova. The importance of the event caught the imagination of the Science section staff. "It is something I never expected to see in my ( lifetime," says Sciences Editor Leon Jaroff, who conceived and edited the cover. "When you look out on a starry night, you're really looking backward in time. The light from the nearest star was emitted four years and four months ago. This explosion in the southern skies happened before our species evolved. It dramatically marks the death of a star." Adds Bjerklie: "We had been thinking of a cover story on our sun, but it has only a few little fluctuations -- nothing as eye-popping as this."

The enthusiasm among the members of TIME's headquarters team was confirmed by reports from Washington Correspondent Dick Thompson, who covered a NASA meeting on 1987A at the Goddard Space Flight Center, and Rio de Janeiro Bureau Chief Gavin Scott, who flew to northern Chile, where astrophysicists first sighted 1987A. Chicago Correspondent Madeleine Nash, who specializes in science, canvassed supernova experts from Cambridge, Mass., to Santa Cruz, Calif. Says Nash: "I had heard of supernovas, of course, but was only dimly aware of their importance." After a few interviews, she became an aficionado. "The energy released by a supernova makes Mount St. Helens or Krakatoa look absolutely puny in comparison," she declares. "The explosive death of a star is truly worthy of our awe."