AAT observations of the interstellar medium towards SN 1987A

The exceptional brightness of SN 1987A has provided a unique opportunity to probe intervening gas clouds in the disk and halo of our Galaxy and in the Large Magellanic Cloud, (LMC) as well as intergalactic matter between the two. At the Anglo-Australian Observatory this opportunity has been exploited in two ways: in searches for very weak interstellar features requiring exceptionally high signal-to-noise ratio spectra, and in recording known interstellar lines with unprecedentedly high spectral resolution. The evolution of the light-echoes is also being monitored photographically to map the three-dimensional distribution of interstellar matter near the supernova. Surprisingly high column densities of million-degree gas have been found in the LMC through the first detection of [Fe X] in absorption. The hot gas may fill the interior of a 'superbubble' created by the combined effects of previous supernovae in this active region of star-formation; this cavity may be related to the shells of interstellar matter giving rise to the light-echoes. The ultra-high resolution observations, which required the rapid construction of a dedicated new spectrograph, were successful in resolving the hyperfine structure of the sodium D lines in several interstellar clouds. This implies that the clouds are at temperatures of at most 170 K and have internal turbulent velocities of no more than 0.3 km s-1, even though some are moving with high velocities relative to the Sun. 47 refs., 3 figs