A rare nova explosion will soon launch a new star into the night sky.

NASA recently revealed that a “new star” is likely to appear in the night sky sometime between now and September. This astronomical phenomenon which has been predicted to happen for years is being awaited by astronomers. Dr. Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center said that such event will foster generation of astronomers and they will be able to observe, inquire and collect data themselves.

It is called a nova and will take place in the Corona Borealis constellation within the Milky Way between the constellations Boötes and Hercules. In contrast with the supernova, which indicates the death of a large star, a nova is a short burst of a cinder, called a white dwarf.

This is a unique event because such phenomena are not often observed at least once in a person’s lifetime or even within our solar system. Dr. Hounsell seemed to be very much looking forward to this opportunity of witnessing such a phenomenon first hand.

T Coronae Borealis or Bizuss-Baze, more commonly called the Blaze Star, is a binary star situated in the Corona Borealis constellation. It comprises a white dwarf, which is a compact star that no longer produces energy, and an old red giant that has exhausted its fuel. Red giants are evolved stars which occur at the later stages of stellar evolution after the stars have exhausted the hydrogen fuel that was used to sustain nuclear fusion. The sun will also expand and starts shedding outer layers of material, phases it will undergo in about 5 to 6 billion years and will impact the inner componets of the solar system. This is according to a research conducted by NASA and taking all things into consideration, the future of planet earth is still bleak.

The star, T Coronae Borealis, which is located in the constellation Corvus, goes through explosive eruptions every about 80 years. In this particular case, the two stars involved are very close to one another and thus, interaction is very tight. When temperature of the red giant increases and becomes unstable, it ejects its layers and the floating white dwarf attracts them.

This exchange of material heats up the white dwarf until it causes a runaway thermonuclear reaction and the star suddenly undergoes a nova, as illustrated in the animation below according to NASA.

Keep an eye on the shifting sky

A new star was observed resulting from T Coronae Borealis in the autumn of 1217 when Burchard, the abbot of Ursberg, Germany, reported, “a star that has begun to twinkle and blazed suddenly for a while,” according to NASA. This was the first known sighting of the Blaze Star.

The most recent outburst in T Coronae Borealis was observed in 1946, and as a result, the star system has been under scrutiny again.

‘The vast majority of novae are observed without any warning,’ said William J. Cooke, the head of the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA via email. However, T Coronae Borealis is among the ten recurrent novae in the galaxy Becoming dim for more than a year before becoming bright again, based on the previous eruption in 1946 The decline of Coronae Borealis began in March of the previous year and some experts predict a nova event between now and September The exact time is hard to determine; with the uncertainty spans several months due to the current state of knowledge.

The star system is based 3000 light years from Earth and is generally to faint to be seen with the naked eye. It is expected to rise to equal the brightness of Polaris or the North Star.

This star will shine for a few days without any kind of telescope and about slightly over a week with binoculars before it fades and becomes invisible again for about 80 years or more.

The nova event will occur in a small strip of sky along the border of Boötes and Hercules, visible from the Northern Hemisphere.

“The Northern Crown is a horseshoe-shaped curve of stars west of the Hercules constellation, ideally spotted on clear nights,” according to a NASA announcement. “It can be identified by locating the two brightest stars in the Northern Hemisphere — Arcturus and Vega — and tracking a straight line from one to the other, which will lead skywatchers to Hercules and the Corona Borealis.”

Global observations

Dr. Elizabeth Hays, who leads the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory at NASA Goddard, expected that the phenomenon would be popular among amateur astronomers.

“As amateur astronomers and space enthusiasts, citizens are always scanning for those brilliant, powerful signals that show nova events and other occurrences,” said Hays. “It will be done by e-mail and social networks, and adding notifications will unfold very dynamically, We are counting on the international community again to respond to T CrB.

This new star will be analyzed by astronomers utilizing ground- and space-based telescopes, and data from the public could also help researchers reconstruct the events leading to the explosion, based on Hounsell.

It seems that usually only parts of nova events become visible, while the whole event stays beyond the scope of observation, but “this one will be very close, with many eyes on it,” Hays pointed out.

“Thus, observations of recurrent novae, such as T Coronae Borealis, allow for understanding the mass transfer between stars in such systems and investigating the thermonuclear explosion that occurs on the white dwarf when the star undergoes a nova,” noted Cooke.

Cooke remembered the last nova that he observed Nova Cygni in 1975, and according to him T Coronae Borealis was not much fainter than it. Possibly, Nova Cygni will not explode again in the near future.

Explaining the incident, Cooke recalled, ‘I was a teenage astronomy enthusiast about to begin college, and I was outside on the night of August 29. ’‘Once I was looking at the Cygnus constellation and I saw that something was not right; there was a star that was not supposed to be there’ After some fun with my friends who were laughing at me, mistaking me as having a hallucination, I convinced my friends to check it out and as much as I can remember we witnessed a nova We had a lot of fun and it made me more determined to take up astronomy as a

Even if T Coronae Borealis is not expected to go off by September, there are still ways that astronomers would like to study it in case it does.

“Recurrent novae are unpredictable and contrarian,” Dr. Koji Mukai, an astrophysics researcher at NASA Goddard, said in a statement. “When you believe there can’t possibly be a reason why they follow a specific fixed pattern, they do—and as soon as you start to rely on them following the same pattern, they depart totally. “We’ll see how T CrB behaves.”

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