Neutrinos observed from SN 1987A by the Kamioka and IMB detectors are interpreted in terms of thermal emission from a cooling proto-neutron star. This star is the residue of the gravitational collapse of the core of a massive star at the end of its life. It has been shown that the time scale and energy of the neutrino burst is in accord with this scenario. Using both moment and maximum-likelihood methods, the average temperature of the emitted antineutrinos is inferred to be 3-5 MeV, and the total energy emitted in electron antineutrinos is estimated to be 5 +/- 2 x 10^52^ ergs. However, 1 σ errors for the temperature and total energy determinations are large, due primarily to counting statistics. Care has been taken to include the detector response function, which improves, marginally, the agreement between the two detections we analyzed. Also investigated was the statistical significance of the so-called gaps in the arrival times of the neutrinos, especially in the Kamioka data. It is argued that these gaps are due to low counting statistics and not to any pulsing or bursting behavior of the source.
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Lattimer et al. (1989) studied this question.