An artist’s rendering shows the T Coronae Borealis star system, which contains a white dwarf and a red giant.
Concept Image Lab/Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA
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Concept Image Lab/Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA
An artist’s rendering shows the T Coronae Borealis star system, which contains a white dwarf and a red giant.
Concept Image Lab/Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA
Space enthusiasts, thank your lucky stars.
Astronomers expect that this year you will be able to witness the explosion of a star system in our galaxy, the Milky Way, just by looking at the sky.
Yes, we know you just spent all this time figuring out how to catch the solar eclipse.
But the next nova in the T Coronae Borealis star system is much less common, occurring about once every 80 years. A nova occurs when a small star suddenly and dramatically brightens for a short period of time.
“Seeing this star explode is much rarer than a solar eclipse,” NASA astronomer Bill Cooke told NPR. “So it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
Located approximately 3,000 light years from Earth, T Coronae Borealis is a binary star system containing a white dwarf and a red giant.
As the red giant heats up and its pressure increases, it begins to spew out material collected by the white dwarf, according to NASA. The smaller star, about the size of Earth, is so overloaded with material that it explodes.
“Eventually it accumulates so much material that a thermonuclear reaction literally starts and the star brightens hundreds of times. It just becomes super bright,” Cooke said.
Such an event is called a nova, derived from the Latin “new star”, because a once dark celestial object suddenly brightens, giving the impression of a new star.
T Coronae Borealis is expected to nova any time between now and September. When this happens, the star system could go from a magnitude of +10, invisible to the naked eye, to a magnitude of +2, about the same level of brightness as the North Star. (Higher positive numbers indicate dimmer stars.)
Astronomers say that once the nova reaches peak brightness, it will be visible for several days. Those who use binoculars will be able to see it for a little over a week before it darkens again.
An explosion of T Coronae Borealis was observed scientifically in 1866, but it may also have been spotted as early as 1217 by a German monk who documented an object that “shined with great light” for “several days.” The star system last exploded in 1946.
NASA says the nova will be visible in the constellation Corona Borealis, which is a “small semicircular arc” located between the constellations Bouvier and Hercules.
When you spot the T Coronae Borealis explosion, consider this: because the star system is so distant, the explosion we’ll see already happened about 3,000 years earlier.
“The Bronze Age Collapse,” Cooke said. “You know, the great empires of Egypt, of Troy, were collapsing.”
NPR News
