Rare ‘star’ predicted to blaze brightly in night sky will be visible to naked eye

A rare new jewel will blaze in the night sky’s Northern Crown sometime before the end of this year if all predictions are correct. It will shine so brightly in the Milky Way’s deep dark that while it is 3,000 light-years away, or about 17.6 quadrillion miles, it will be close enough to see from Earth with just your eyes.

The illustrious illumination of the additional “star” in the crown-shaped constellation Corona Borealis will be short-lived, however, only shining for 2 or 3 days before it takes another nearly 100-year regal retirement.

What we’ll see is not an actual star. It’s the light from an astronomical thermonuclear explosion caused by the buildup of pressure and heat in the binary system T Coronae Borealis, also dubbed the “Blaze Star.”

These types of celestial explosions are called novae, not to be confused with supernovae, which are the killing big bangs for some dying stars.

“This is the one big chance you have of seeing the brightest nova of the generation,” Brad Scaefer, professor emeritus at Louisiana State University and expert on these types of novae, told Astronomy magazine.

The nova that happens in T CrB, as astronomers refer to the T Coronae Borealis system, is a recurrent nova. It can continue again and again for up to hundreds of thousands of years and happens pretty regularly about every 80 years.

The last time it erupted was in 1946.

Scaefer whose been a long-time observer of these types of novae in T CrB, says the next explosion will happen this year, likely sometime in September.

Data from amateur astronomers with the American Association of Variable Star Observers also stand up Schaefer’s prediction.

The nova was first recorded more than 800 years ago in the fall of 1217 in Germany when “a faint star that for a time shone with a great light” was observed by a man named Burchard. The system’s behavior during the past 10 years correlates with observations and data from the decade before the 1946 eruption, leading to the prognostications of this summer/fall being the prime time for its next show.

“There are few recurrent novae with 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,” said Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research assistant scientist specializing in nova events at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in a recent NASA article. “It’s incredibly exciting to have this front-row seat.”

Of course, it hasn’t happened yet, said Randy Campbell, senior staff astronomer at W. M. Keck Observatory on the Big Island.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty in that prediction, but it probably will go off, you know, in the next several months or so,” he said.

More and more, astronomy is becoming interested in how the universe is changing with time and in short timescales — how it’s changing from night to night, trying to catch variances; comets, explosions, planets rotating around stars and other objects moving with regular, dynamic timing.

The universe is an active and dynamic place and novae in particular have led to many breakthroughs in physics and understanding nuclear physics, binary stars and stellar evolution.

“Novae have always been important teachers and laboratories for astrophysics and continue to be,” Campbell said. “This one will be, too …”

The T CrB system is made up of an Earth-sized white dwarf, a dead star with a mass similar to our sun’s, slowly stripping hydrogen from its eternal ancient red giant dance partner, ensnared by its relentless gravitational pull, as it feeds its insatiable hunger.

As the hydrogen accumulates on the white dwarf’s surface, pressure and heat build up, and a thermonuclear explosion — the nova — of cosmic proportions erupts, sending the built-up material into space in a blinding flash.

Astronomers around the globe, professionals and backyard enthusiasts alike will be watching for the T CrB nova. It’s been making headlines for several months already and likely will continue to do so even well after it is gone.

Campbell said because the T CrB nova became so popular, it captured the imagination of the world and that part of the sky is being observed constantly, with people hoping to be some of the first to see the explosion happen and the new “star” shine.

When it does, it will be about a million times brighter than what we see from our sun. It is expected to be about as bright as the North Star. You shouldn’t be able to miss it.

The Northern Crown constellation is west of the Hercules constellation and can be found by locating the two brightest stars in the Northern Hemisphere, Arcturus and Vega, then following a straight line from each.

“Typically, nova events are so faint and far away that it’s hard to clearly identify where the erupting energy is concentrated,” Elizabeth Hays, chief of the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in the NASA article. “This one will be really close, with a lot of eyes on it, studying the various wavelengths and hopefully giving us data to start unlocking the structure and specific processes involved. We can’t wait to get the full picture of what’s going on.”

At Keck, astronomers will be using spectrometers to look at some of the dynamics of the nova, measuring the rate at which the material being ejected from the white dwarf is expanding. Campbell said they can also look at some of the elements that are produced in the explosion that cause the star to brighten.

“They’re elderly stars, or kūpuna stars,” he said. “Like kūpuna, they teach us a lot about aging and all that.”

Campbell added that it will also be fun to look at the remnants of the explosion even months or a year or two later after a nebula has been formed from the material ejected.

The shape of the nebula, the speed at which it expands, the elements, how fast it cools, how it forms, how the elements react as it cools, the dust that forms, how elements come together into bigger molecules and more will be just some of what is studied.

The sheer amount of data and information that will be collected from this event because of the number of people observing it is perhaps the most exciting aspect of it.

“This will be unique in that it will be one of the most observed phenomena in recent times,” Campbell said, comparing it to recent total solar eclipses on the mainland during which millions of people were watching, observing and recording.

While the T CrB nova will be different since it will be at night and will take more of a commitment to study, with the massive amounts of data already collected, even from thousands of people using their backyard telescopes to keep a watchful eye, it’s already proving to be one of the most watched objects in history.

“It’ll be big news and everyone will be looking at it,” Campbell said, including all of the Mauna Kea telescopes.

With new technology available, the nova also will be able to be studied in greater detail this time around, especially the energetic process that causes the explosion and the elements involved.

Campbell specifically mentioned NASA’s new Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which is a high-energy telescope that looks specifically at gamma rays from low Earth orbit. Gamma rays consist of high-energy photons produced when materials ejected from the white dwarf’s surface during the explosion shock into surrounding materials.

The telescope will help scientists better understand that process and study it in greater detail, being able to now look at it in different wavelengths and with different capabilities to put the pieces of the puzzle together and get a complete picture of how it works.

The NASA article said other space-based missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer and the European Space Agency’s Extreme Universe Surveyor also will be watching, along with numerous ground-based radio telescopes and optical imagers.

Because the nova goes through several phases, observers will have plenty to work with for quite some time after the shiny jewel of the Northern Crown has faded from the night sky.

Putting all of that data together could provide some of the most unprecedented insight into binary systems and the powerful processes behind them ever produced.

An event such as the T CrB nova would have enthralled ancient Hawaiians and Polynesians, who knew the night sky in great detail as they used it for navigation and other purposes. They were in tune with at least the planets and how they change relative to the stars and likely would have been amazed by an event like the nova — that it was there one night and not a few nights later.

“You can imagine them having a discussion about it and the meaning of it and whether it was some kind of marker or sign,” Campbell said, adding the ancients had a strong connection with the sky and a remarkable ability to understand and use it, which continues to be part of Hawaiian culture.

With the nova grabbing so much attention around the world now, it doesn’t just tickle basic human curiosity, it’s a teaching and learning opportunity for today and tomorrow.

“People will go out and try to find it,” Campbell said. “Just trying to find it once, you have to orient yourself to where to look in the sky and understand where some of the other constellations and things [are]. So some very basic backyard astronomy skills are going to be needed just to find it and just to observe it.”

Then there’s the timing, which teaches about the dynamic aspect of the universe and the transient nature of objects in our own Milky Way galaxy.

Other questions such as why the new “star” fades so fast, why it gets so bright so fast, how many of these sorts of things are there and what are the basic physics behind this kind of exciting event also might lead to even more.

“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,” Hounsell said in the NASA article. “It’ll fuel the next generation of scientists.”

However, Campbell said there is of course the chance September could pass without the anticipated nova eruption.

As one NASA researcher said, recurrent nova are unpredictable; as soon as they start to seem to repeat the same pattern, they change it up.

But right now, all signs point to go, and needless to say, the T Coronae Borealis nova has skywatchers around the planet on the edge of their seats.

“T CrB will be the brightest nova for generations,” Schaefer told spaceweather.com. “It’s a chance for everyone in the world to step outside, look up and see the hellfire.”