NASA Predicts Rare Nova Explosion This Summer

NASA Predicts Rare Nova Explosion This Summer

NASA predicts a nova will occur sometime this summer, about 3,000 light-years from Earth, but it can be witnessed with the naked eye.

The nova reoccurs once every 80 years.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event that will create a lot of new astronomers out there, giving young people a cosmic event they can observe for themselves, ask their own questions, and collect their own data,” said Dr. Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist specializing in nova events at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’ll fuel the next generation of scientists.”

The nova should happen in a dark spot among the seven stars of Corona Borealis, known as the Northern Crown.

The dark spot contains “two stars that are bound to and in orbit around each other,” known as T Coronae Borealis or T CrB. NASA nicknamed it the Blaze Star:

T Coronae Borealis, dubbed the “Blaze Star” and known to astronomers simply as “T CrB,” is a binary system nestled in the Northern Crown some 3,000 light-years from Earth. The system is comprised of a white dwarf – an Earth-sized remnant of a dead star with a mass comparable to that of our Sun – and an ancient red giant slowly being stripped of hydrogen by the relentless gravitational pull of its hungry neighbor.

The hydrogen from the red giant accretes on the surface of the white dwarf, causing a buildup of pressure and heat. Eventually, it triggers a thermonuclear explosion big enough to blast away that accreted material. For T CrB, that event appears to reoccur, on average, every 80 years.

EarthSky provided a picture of it. The app SkyView makes it easy to find the constellations and so much more.

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It is not a supernova:

In a nova event, the dwarf star remains intact, sending the accumulated material hurtling into space in a blinding flash. The cycle typically repeats itself over time, a process which can carry on for tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

“There are a few recurrent novae with very short cycles, but typically, we don’t often see a repeated outburst in a human lifetime, and rarely one so relatively close to our own system,” Hounsell said. “It’s incredibly exciting to have this front-row seat.”

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