Are astronomers pitching a new show called “Law & Order: Special Supernova Death Unit”? Probably not, but they are conducting their own investigation into the remains of a supernova to see what killed the star that produced it.

Astronomers are using radio telescopes in Australia and Chile to see inside the supernova’s remains in what researchers are calling a forensic investigation, according to Sky News in Australia.

Scientists around the world have been taking a close look at Supernova 1987A, which exists on the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula, which itself lies within the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby galaxy that is about 168,000 light-years away. It is called Supernova 1987A because that was the year that light from the supernova first reached Earth and was discovered by a scientist in Chile.

Giovanna Zanardo of the University of Western Australia led a team that used a large radio telescope known as the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array in Chile’s Atacama Desert, as well as the Australia Telescope Compact Array. Using this sensitive equipment the team has been able to differentiate between radiation coming from the supernova’s shock wave, and from radiation that emanates from dust that forms the inner regions of the supernova’s remnants.

This allows scientists to separate different types of radioactive emissions and determine whether a new object formed after the collapse of the core of the star — and researchers are now seeing through the massive cloud of debris ejected from the explosion to see what’s happening underneath, which has never been seen before.

The research was published in the Astrophysical Journal.