According to recent reports, a star system roughly 3,000 miles away from Earth is set to become visible to the naked eye. The Nova explosion occurs about once every eighty years, making the opportunity to view it a once-in-a-lifetime event.
The T Coronae Borealis, also known as T CrB, last erupted in 1946, and astronomers anticipate it will occur again sometime between now and September. “It was originally a faint star that for a time shone with great light and then returned to its original faintness,” wrote the abbot of the Ursberg Abbey in 1217 upon viewing the Corona Borealis. The constellation lies in a semicircular pattern between the Bootes and Hercules constellations.
A Nova is considered an extremely rare astronomical event that occurs approximately once a century when a white dwarf star, roughly the size of the sun, and a red giant star nearing the end of its life, rapidly expanding, approaches the smaller star.
According to NASA, the star system is usually a magnitude +10, meaning it is too far to observe with the naked eye. However, the system will increase to a magnitude +2 during the explosion, where it will be roughly equivalent in brightness to the North Star, Polaris.
Scientists have noted the magnitude of the event, describing its importance within the astronomy community. “[Novae] are completely weird events,” stated Bradley Schaefer, an astrophysicist at Louisiana State University. However, T CrB is unique in that it undergoes a dynamic brightening and dimming that captures the imagination. Schaefer added that “when T CrB goes off, a large fraction of every telescope in the world is going to be pointed at it.”
“This is like a gigantic hydrogen bomb that blasts off the entire atmosphere of this Earth-size white dwarf,” says Ole König, an astronomer at Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen- Nuremberg in Germany, describing the scale of the Nova eruption. “The aspect I find the most exciting is the potential of novae as progenitors of type 1a supernovae,” Healy-Kalesh added.
Michael Healy-Kalesh, an astrophysicist at Liverpool John Moores University in England, explained that the Novae produce elements necessary to life such as lithium. “Novae are producers of elements needed for life, such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen,” he said.
“Our members love things that go boom,” noted Brian Kloppenborg, an astrophysicist at the American Association of Variable Star Observers in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Highlighting its importance in astronomy, he stated, “I get an e-mail once every 10 minutes with some new observations.”
“Most novae happen unexpectedly, without warning,” explained William J. Cooke, NASA Meteoroid Environments Office lead. “However, T Coronae Borealis is one of 10 recurring novae in the galaxy. We know from the last eruption back in 1946 that the star will get dimmer for just over a year before rapidly increasing in brightness. T Coronae Borealis began to dim in March of last year, so some researchers are expecting it to go nova between now and September. But the uncertainty as to when this will happen is several months — can’t do better than that with what we know now.”
Watch news coverage of the event below:
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
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