by A rare burst of light from a dead star is likely to be visible to humans on World this summer in a celestial but potentially stark display that scientists are calling a “once-in-a-lifetime event”.
The technical term for the upcoming cosmic explosion is Nova, which occurs when a white dwarf suddenly and often brilliantly lights up in the night sky. A “white dwarf” is how astronomers describe a star at the end of its life, having exhausted all its nuclear fuel and leaving only its core. Compared to a supernova — another solar phenomenon visible from Earth, when a star effectively explodes — Nova instead refers to the dramatic ejection of material that a white dwarf has accumulated over time from a nearby younger star.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event that will create a lot of new astronomers out there, giving young people a cosmic event where they can observe for themselves, ask their own questions, and collect their own data,” said Rebekah Hounsell, assistant research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who specializes in nova events, in a statement. “It will fuel the next generation of scientists.”
Between now and September, scientists expect a nova in the Corona Borealis, or Northern Crown, of the The Milky Way His flash will send as powerful in space that the naked eye can witness it, NASA announced recently. It will take place in a dark spot in the constellation, where violent interactions between a white dwarf and a red giant will culminate in this massive explosion.
A red giant is a dying star in the final phase of its life, becoming more turbulent as it expands and periodically expelling material from its outer layers in intense episodes.
Known collectively as T Coronae Borealis, also named the “Blaze Star,” the white and red dwarf is predicted to create a nova this summer to form a binary star system in the Northern Corona, located about 3,000 light years from Earth. The red giant in this pairing is constantly being stripped of hydrogen as it continues on its path toward total collapse, while the nearby white dwarf is pulling that material into its own orbit, according to NASA. The hydrogen siphoned from the red giant accumulates on the surface of the white dwarf over several years, until the heat and pressure have built up enough to trigger a full-blown thermonuclear explosion.
The explosion, which looks like a nuclear bomb, sends out the dead a star of that excess material. The eruption will likely be visible to Earth for one week before it disappears again, but the white dwarf and red giant in the Blaze Star system will still be intact whenever it disappears. At that point, the process of building hydrogen between the two stars will resume, and will continue until the accumulation of material on the white dwarf reaches its threshold the next time and suddenly explodes.
Different binary systems like T Coronae Borealis move through this cycle at different speeds. A nova typically erupts from the Blaze Star about every 80 years or so.
With a possible new eruption of T Coronae Borealis in the coming months, sky watchers are on the edge of their seats! Scientists are ready to observe it with space-based and ground-based telescopes to learn more about this recurring cosmic phenomenon. https://t.co/jlo4loldUo pic.twitter.com/I1c6RUhwVF
— NASA Universe (@NASAUniverse) June 7, 2024
“There are a few recurring novae with very short cycles, but in general, we don’t often see repeated outbursts in human lifetimes, and one so close to our own system is rare,” Hounsell said. “It’s really exciting to have this front seat.”
When the nova in T Coronae Borealis eventually occurs, it will be the first of that pair seen from Earth since 1946, according to NASA. The agency advised hopeful stargazers to look for the Northern Crown, which it describes as “a horseshoe-shaped curve of stars west of the constellation Hercules,” on clear nights. NASA has also encouraged citizens to observe the phenomenon as best they can, although its own scientists will study the nova at its peak and during its decline.
“But it’s just as important to get data during the early rise of an eruption,” Hounsell said, “so the data collected by those enthusiastic citizen scientists watching out for the nova will greatly enhance our findings.”
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