Rare nova explosion will soon bring a ‘new star’ to the night sky How to get a glimpse

At some point in the next few months, a distant dead star will brighten rapidly in a powerful explosion, making it visible from Earth for a short period of time. To an observer on the ground, it looks like a new star.

The Dead Star, which is not currently bright enough to appear in the sky, is one of a pair of stars orbiting each other in a binary star system called T Coronae Borealis, or T CrB. The remaining stellar core, known as a white dwarf, is robbing material from the neighboring red giant star. According to NASA, when enough white dwarfs gather together, they release energy in a bright burst about every 80 years or so.

Astronomers await this brief event with excitement. When T CrB explodes, a large proportion of all the world’s telescopes will be trained on it, said Bradley Schaefer, an astrophysicist at Louisiana State University. scientific americanRobin George Andrews.

T CrB is 3,000 light-years away from Earth. According to CBC’s Nicole Mortillaro, astronomer John Birmingham observed two explosions in 1866 in western Ireland. Then, it broke out again in 1946. New York Times Robin George Andrews.

This type of event is called a nova, where a white dwarf star reignites a rapid increase in brightness after years of slumber. These explosions are different from supernovae, which are more dramatic. A supernova occurs when a dying star explodes with a release of energy that briefly exceeds that of the galaxy.

In a system like T CrB, a white dwarf dances with a red giant, a star that runs out of fuel and begins to die. The red giant star expands in volume, increases in temperature and pressure, and begins to eject its outer layers. Most of this material is hydrogen gas, which is swallowed up by the white dwarf. Eventually, the surface temperature of the white dwarf becomes hot enough, reaching about 10 million Kelvin, to produce a nuclear explosion.

These novae are basically hydrogen bombs, Schafer told NASA. New York Times.

How to watch a nova explode

T CrB white dwarfs are usually too faint to be seen with the naked eye from Earth. But at the peak of its explosion, it will appear as bright as the North Star. You don’t need any special equipment to see it.

T Cor Bor from the lowest level it has just fallen to the top now [in about] Shafer told CBC News it was about three hours, which is really quick.

The bright explosion will appear in the constellation Corona Borealis, a small semicircle between the constellations Hercules and Portus. If you want to witness the event firsthand, NASA recommends familiarizing yourself with Corona Borealis before the brief explosion.

According to NASA, T CrB should be visible to the naked eye in a few days, and with binoculars in just over a week.

Shafer tells us it’s short national geographicAdam Kovacs. It only maintains peak brightness for a few hours and then starts fading quickly.

When will new stars appear?

Astronomers don’t have the exact time when the explosion occurred, but they are refining their guesses based on the behavior of the last nova, T CrB.

William J. Cooke, director of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, told CNN’s Ashley Strickland that from the last eruption in 1946 We know that the star will dim over a period of more than a year and then rapidly increase in brightness. Corona Borealis started dimming last March, so some researchers expect it to nova between now and September.

“We’ve been watching it around the world, and it’s doing some interesting things,” Arizona State University astrophysicist Sumner Starrfield told CNN. national geographic. It became brighter over the years and has now faded a bit. It seems to be doing pretty much the same thing it did before the explosion in 1946, which is why we’re suddenly very interested.

When the light from the explosion does appear in Earth’s sky, it will be a rare moment in astronomy. Cook told CNN that T CrB is one of only ten recurring novae in the Milky Way.

Paul Delaney, an astronomer at the University of York in Canada, told CBC that the fact that it repeats on a time scale we can handle makes it very special, as far as humans are concerned.

Cook told the media it was a once-in-a-lifetime event New York Times. How often can people say they’ve seen a star explode?