(Photo : Wikimedia Commons/David Ritter)
The "Blaze Star," a recurrent nova, which means "new star" in Latin, will erupt later this year, and it might be visible to the naked eye.
Blaze Star Will Erupt With Magnificent Explosion
The "Blaze Star" T Coronae Borealis, a dim star, will burst into a spectacular explosion that may be seen with the unaided eye sometime between now and September. It will be the first time the star has been visible since its discovery in 1946, and it will be easy to spot it in the night sky.
The Blaze Star is located in the "Northern Crown," or Corona Borealis constellation, which lies between the constellations Boötes and Hercules. The simplest method to locate Corona Borealis is to first identify some of the brightest stars in the summer sky.
Find the Big Dipper's stars high in the northern sky on any clear night. Follow the starry handle of the Big Dipper eastward until you reach Arcturus, a reddish-bright star visible above the horizon. That is the well-known star-hop from "arc to Arcturus". Vega will rise in the east-northeast. Now search for a faint curl of seven stars known as Corona Borealis between Arcturus and Vega, which is a little closer to Arcturus. After nightfall, there will be a high overhead. The Blaze Star won't be seen just yet, but before the summer is out, it should be clearly visible.
Dr. Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist specializing in nova events at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said the rare nova explosion is a "once-in-lifetime event." She noted that there are a few recurrent novae with short cycles, but we don't usually see repeated outbursts in our lifetime, and rarely does it happen so close to our system. So, the anticipated explosion is an "incredibly exciting" experience. She also expects that the upcoming cosmic event will fuel the next generation of scientists.
However, Dr. Koji Mukai, a fellow astrophysics researcher at NASA Goddard, warned that there are also chances that September will come and go without the nova outburst. According to Mukai, "Recurrent novae are unpredictable and contrarian."
Even though it seems impossible that they would follow a predetermined pattern, they do, and as soon as you begin to count on them to do so, they stop following it altogether. We'll watch T CrB's behavior, Mukai added. The team will continue to monitor the Blaze Star's behavior.
About Blaze Star
T Coronae Borealis, dubbed the "Blaze Star" and simply referred to by astronomers as "T CrB," is a binary system that is situated 3,000 light-years away from Earth in the Northern Crown. The system consists of an old red giant that is gradually losing hydrogen due to the intense gravitational attraction of its ravenous partner and a white dwarf, an Earth-sized relic of a dead star with a mass similar to our Sun.
Pressure and heat build up on the surface of the white dwarf as a result of the red giant's hydrogen accreting there. It eventually sets off a massive enough thermonuclear explosion to blast away the accumulated material. That occurrence seems to happen again for T CrB, on average, every 80 years.
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