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Space Yacht: Tech My House

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Cosmic explosion will be visible to the naked eye in once-in-a-lifetime stargazing event

A rare cosmic eruption is expected to occur in the Milky Way in the coming months — an outburst so bright that a “new” star will seemingly appear for a short time in the night sky.

The event, known as a nova, will be a once-in-a-lifetime skywatching opportunity for those in the Northern Hemisphere, according to NASA , because the types of star systems in which such explosions occur are not common in our galaxy.

The stellar eruption will take place in a system called T Coronae Borealis, which is 3,000 light-years away from Earth. It contains two stars: a dead star, also known as a “ white dwarf ,” closely orbited by a red giant . Red giants are dying stars that are running out of hydrogen fuel in their cores; the sun in our solar system will eventually become one, according to NASA.

In systems like T Coronae Borealis, the two stars are so near to each other that matter from the red giant is constantly spilling onto the surface of the white dwarf. Over time, this builds up pressure and heat, eventually triggering an eruption.

“As matter accumulates on the surface of the white dwarf, it heats up and you get higher and higher pressure until bang — it’s a runaway reaction,” said Bradley Schaefer, a professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University.

He likened the nova explosion to a hydrogen bomb detonating in space, adding that the resulting fireball is essentially what people will be able to see from Earth. (A nova is different from a supernova explosion , which occurs when a massive star collapses and dies.)

At its peak, the eruption should be visible to the naked eye, Schaefer said: “It’s going to be bright in the sky, so it’ll be easily visible from your backyard.”

Astronomers predict that the nova explosion could happen anytime between now and September. The last time this particular star system erupted was in 1946, Schaefer said, and another eruption will likely not occur for another 80 years or so.

Astronomers around the world are monitoring activity in the T Coronae Borealis system. Once an eruption is detected, Schaefer said, the best and brightest views will likely come within 24 hours, when it reaches roughly the same brightness as the North Star. The outburst may remain visible to the naked eye for a couple of days before it begins to fade.

Even after it dims, skywatchers will likely still be able to spot the eruption for around a week using binoculars, according to NASA.

The T Coronae Borealis system is normally too dim to see unaided, but skywatchers can find the outburst by locating the constellation Corona Borealis, or the Northern Crown. The constellation will appear as a small, semicircular arc between the more widely recognizable constellations of Hercules and Bootes.

Schaefer, who has done extensive research on the T Coronae Borealis system, said it’s worth trying to catch a glimpse.

“This system happens to have a recurrence time scale under a century, but most of them have cycle times longer than 1,000 years or so,” he said.

In a paper published last year in the Journal for the History of Astronomy , Schaefer discovered two “long-lost” T Coronae Borealis eruptions in historical records — one documented by German monks in the year 1217 and another seen by the English astronomer Francis Wollaston in 1787.

“These monks near Augsburg, Germany, didn’t know what it was at the time, but they highlighted the eruption as being one of the two most important events of the year,” Schaefer said. “They called it in Latin ‘signum mirabile,’ which translates to ‘wonderful omen.’ It was thought to be a good sign.”

But pinpointing the exact time when skywatchers will have a chance to see this “wonderful omen” is tricky business.

“It could maybe even happen tonight,” Schaefer said. “More probably it’ll be within the next couple of months, and very probably before the end of summer.”

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.

A rare nova ignites a 'new star' in the sky this year. Here's how to see it

A nova outburst visible to the naked eye is expected to decorate the night sky this year, offering a once-in-a-lifetime stargazing opportunity.

A nova outburst visible to the naked eye is expected to decorate the night sky this year, offering a rare skywatching opportunity. 

The star system offering us this opportunity is known as T Coronae Borealis (T CrB). It's located some 3,000 light-years away from Earth and consists of a red giant star and a white dwarf that orbit each other. When the white dwarf steals enough stellar material from its red giant companion, it ignites a brief flash of nuclear fusion on its surface, triggering what is known as a nova outburst.

The outburst will be visible in the constellation Corona Borealis, also known as the Northern Crown, which forms a semicircle of stars. The outburst is expected to occur between February and September 2024 and appear as bright as the North Star in our night sky for no longer than a week before fading again, NASA officials said in a statement . 

Related: Fastest nova ever seen 'rings' like a bell thanks to feeding white dwarf

"This could be a once-in-a-lifetime viewing opportunity as the nova outburst only occurs about every 80 years," NASA officials said in the statement. 

This recurrent nova, which last exploded in 1946, is just one of five observed within the Milky Way galaxy. To spot the outburst, viewers should point their gaze to Corona Borealis, which lies between the constellations Boötes and Hercules. The outburst will appear as a bright "new" star in the night sky. 

Generally, these binary stars have a magnitude of +10, which is far too dim to see with the unaided eye. However, during the outburst, the stellar system will have a magnitude of +2, which is comparable to the brightness of the North Star , Polaris, according to the statement. 

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"Once its brightness peaks, it should be visible to the unaided eye for several days and just over a week with binoculars before it dims again, possibly for another 80 years," NASA officials said. 

The explosive stellar pair consists of a white dwarf — a relatively small, dense stellar remnant — and a larger red giant star in the late stages of stellar evolution, meaning its outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous. The gravitationally-bound stars are close enough that, as the red giant grows unstable from its increasing temperature and pressure, it ejects its outer layers onto the white dwarf. The accumulation of matter heats the white dwarf's dense atmosphere enough to trigger a thermonuclear reaction that produces the nova we see from Earth. This cycle will continue once the nova dims as well, with the white dwarf collecting enough matter to create another outburst. 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Samantha Mathewson joined Space.com as an intern in the summer of 2016. She received a B.A. in Journalism and Environmental Science at the University of New Haven, in Connecticut. Previously, her work has been published in Nature World News. When not writing or reading about science, Samantha enjoys traveling to new places and taking photos! You can follow her on Twitter @Sam_Ashley13. 

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• AboveAndBeyond There's a close-up photo of Corona Borealis with the location of the star marked at: https://visns.neocities.org/TMITHOA/TM_May.htm . Look under Discoveries/May 12th. It says there the 80 year "period" is only approximate, being based on two known eruptions, and since the last one was in 1946 it might be more like 2025-26 this time. But definitely check out Corona Borealis any clear night you get. Reply
• View All 1 Comment

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Once-In-A-Lifetime Nova Explosion Will Lighten Up Wyoming's Skies This Year

Scientists are predicting a once-in-a-lifetime nova explosion before September. The light from the nova explosion, which happened 3,000 years ago, will reach Earth and be visible to the naked eye. Wyoming will be a great spot to view it.

March 24, 2024 7 min read

A sharp-eyed star gazer in Wyoming might catch a new star in the night sky this spring or summer. Beginning at any time now through the end of September, astronomers are expecting we can see the aftermath of a spectacular celestial event that happened 3,000 years ago.

Astronomers are awaiting a nova from T Coronae Borealis in the Northern Crown constellation, which is located between the constellations of the Boötes and Hercules. A nova is a brief moment when a flash of light from a binary star system shines brightly in the night sky.

The new light is so bright that T Coroane Borealis, ordinarily not visible to the naked eye, can potentially be spotted by Wyomingites. It won’t look like much, but it’s unusual to experience it from our small spot in the universe.

“Novas are a little subtle compared to supernovas,” said Max Gilbraith, the planetarium coordinator for the University of Wyoming Physics and Astronomy Department. “They are called new stars because they will briefly appear as a new light in the sky for a couple of months.”

Giants, Dwarfs, And Thermonuclear Energy

Novas might be called new stars, but that’s not what Wyomingites will see when it happens sometime in the next few months. Gilbraith said the bright light of a nova is a “momentary flare” from the outside of a dying star interacting with what’s left of the inside of a dead star.

First, some space science.

When sun-like stars run out of hydrogen in their cores, they grow to immense sizes, more than 200 times larger than our sun. Those stars are called red giants.

If a red giant isn’t large enough to become a neutron star or a black hole, it condenses into a white dwarf, roughly the size of our planet but as dense as the sun. Astronomers believe this happens to 97% of stars in the universe.

“A nova occurs when you've got a white dwarf, which is a dead sunlike star,” Galbraith said. “That’s got a companion sister star in its orbit. In this case, it's a red giant. And as the very hot inner core of the red giant expands, it causes the outer layers of that star to expand far enough away that they might deposit onto the surface of the white dwarf, the dead core of a sun.”

When this happens, the outer layer of the red giant causes rapid thermonuclear hydrogen fusion on the surface of the white dwarf. That energy creates the bright light that stretches through space.

“It’s a deposition from a dying star onto the core of a dead star that results in a momentary flare of bright light," Gilbraith said. “We're witnessing many millions and millions of instances of thermonuclear hydrogen fusion occurring.”

The light generated by the thermonuclear hydrogen fusion of the dead and dying stars will be the “new star” visible from Wyoming.

Bear in mind that these events happened more than 3,000 years ago. Around the same time the light from this nova was generated, King Solomon of Israel built the first temple in Jerusalem and the city of Rome wouldn’t exist for another 200 years.

Starry Subtlety

The light of the distant nova will reach Earth sometime in the next seven months. Astronomers won’t know for sure until it gets here.

When it does, Gilbraith is confident that anyone who wants to see the nova should be able to. Of course, they’ll need to find it first, which could be tricky.

“It's 3,000 light years from Earth, and that’s a very, very distant star that's further than we typically see with the naked eye,” he said. “Most of the stars in the constellations are within about 1,500 light years.”

Gilbraith said the nova will have a similar brightness to Polaris, the North Star. People might believe that the North Star is the brightest in the sky, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the truth.

“A lot of people, especially in urban environments, might struggle to see Polaris on a moonlit night,” he said.

It’s at the very edge of being visible to the naked eye, and it's not a particularly bright star.”

Astronomers don’t know when we’ll see the nova, but they know where. It’ll be visible in the constellation Corona Borealis, shining like a jewel in the Northern Crown. It’s a U-shaped constellation behind Hercules' back and under Boötes the Herdman’s elbow.

If that’s confusing, no worries. NASA has a guide to assist anyone straining to see the nova or anything else in the night skies.

Because there are so many visible stars in the night sky, Wyomingites might have a more challenging time than many others across the United States. Gilbraith recommends finding a spot with a dark sky and a telescope or binoculars for anyone serious about not missing the nova.

Bright Light, Big Boom

When a white dwarf vibes with energy thrown its way from a nearby neighbor, it manifests as a nova. When a white dwarf gets triggered enough, it manifests as a supernova.

Supernovas are the massive, explosive deaths of white dwarfs as they collapse into a new star or a black hole. They’re so bright they can outshine galaxies in the night sky.

They’re also much rarer. Astronomers can spot around 10 novae every year, but the last supernova visible from Earth was in 1604.

“In the past, supernovas could be brighter than planets in the nighttime sky, and then they fade relatively quickly over time,” said Gilbraith. “Those are the very violent deaths of very massive stars.”

Betelgeuse, a red giant on the shoulder of the constellation Orion, is the next star astronomers expect to explode into a supernova. When it goes, it could be as bright as the moon from our perspective on Earth and could even be visible during the day.

Want to mark your calendar? Don’t. The supernova of Betelgeuse could happen anytime in the next 100,000 years.

Last Candlelight

While not as spectacularly dramatic as a supernova, Gilbraith hopes Wyomingites will be curious enough to seek out Corona Borealis and observe the impending nova. Once its light gets here, it should be visible for several weeks, at least.

A nova, the latest visit from the devil comet, and a total solar eclipse in the Midwest in April. It’s already an eventful spring in space.

The nova might not be the brightest or most exciting sight in the night sky, but it’s quite important for science. Gilbraith said novae help astronomers measure precise distances in space, revealing our distance from other galaxies with much greater accuracy.

But T Coroane Borealis is special. It's one of only five recurring novae in the night sky, which means it has repeatedly sent flashes of light, usually once every 80 years.

A nova isn’t a new star, but it presents new opportunities for stargazers. Gilbraith described it as a candle from a long-dead star, lighting a way in the infinite darkness.

“A nova is a standard candle that always occurs at a characteristic mass,” he said. “It’s holding onto some mass thrown it from its neighbor, and it will briefly reignite that candle just a little.”

Andrew Rossi can be reached at [email protected] .

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A Dead Star Will Soon Spark a Once-in-a-Lifetime Display in Earth’s Skies

A nova called T Coronae Borealis spectacularly erupts every 80 years. Your only chance to see it will come any day now

By Robin George Andrews

A still from an animation depicting how a white dwarf star produces a nova (left) by siphoning material from a red giant star.

NASA/Conceptual Image Lab/Goddard Space Flight Center

In October 1217 the abbot of the Ursberg Abbey in present-day southern Germany looked to the firmament and, in the arc-shaped constellation Corona Borealis, saw something wondrous. “It was originally a faint star that for a time shone with great light and then returned to its original faintness,” he wrote in Latin at the time. He wasn’t the first to see it, nor was he the last. This stellar apparition emerges, then vanishes, every 80 years or so—and that’s because it isn’t really a star at all. That abbot witnessed a thermonuclear explosion 3,000 light-years away. It came from a white dwarf, a stellar zombie that’s devouring matter from a nearby red giant star. Once a century, it gets full, and when it does, it erupts, unleashing a week-long hellfire.

This is T Coronae Borealis—often shortened to T CrB—and it’s what astronomers call a nova, a word that is derived from the Latin description of these events as “new stars,” which many premodern observers assumed them to be. T CrB last erupted in 1946, and its behavior suggests that its next paroxysm is due any moment between now and September. When this occurs, T CrB will become visible to the naked eye as a temporary jewel in its constellation’s stelliferous crown. And far from treating it as a mere spectacle, astronomers are going to use this latest outburst as a chance to learn more about novae, which are oft-overlooked drivers of cosmic chaos.

“[Novae] are completely weird events,” says Bradley Schaefer , an astrophysicist at Louisiana State University. But T CrB is unique: it undergoes a rollercoaster of brightening and dimming that defies conventional wisdom. Sometimes studying the outliers is the best way to understand the population. That’s why, “when T CrB goes off, a large fraction of every telescope in the world is going to be pointed at it,” Schaefer says.

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To understand why T CrB has got astronomers so hyped, it helps to have a primer on your average nova. Each one involves a perilous pairing between a white dwarf, the small carcass left behind at the end of certain stars’ life, and a “normal” companion star—in the case of T CrB, a puffy red giant. The white dwarf is so dense that it’s able to gravitationally pilfer hydrogen from its companion, which snows onto the dwarf’s surface. This veneer heats up and eventually ignites, sparking an unstoppable chain reaction that culminates in a nuclear explosion.

“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. These explosions aren’t supernovae , their more cataclysmic cousins that result in a star’s annihilation . But that doesn’t make them much less impressive or important.

Novae repeatedly and catastrophically erupt, somehow without destroying their stellar progenitors, all while enriching their celestial surroundings with a potent mix of fresh-forged material. “Novae are producers of elements needed for life, such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen,” and could be one of the main producers of lithium, says Michael Healy-Kalesh , an astrophysicist at Liverpool John Moores University in England.

That suggests you can’t fully understand how astrophysics gives rise to biology without decoding novae. And when astronomers are lucky, they find recurrent novae—those that erupt at least once per century—as predictable beacons for their studies. Including T CrB, they’ve only managed to find about 10 in the Milky Way, however. And despite T CrB’s apparent clockworklike dependability, astronomers of yore have proved fickler; the system’s eruptions have only documented for the years 1217, 1787, 1866 and 1946. Based on subtle details observed during its prior two recorded outbursts, “the official prediction is that it’ll go off around April, maybe May, give or take three months,” Schaefer says—and it should be visible for several days.

Some of the world’s leading observatories are already slated to opportunistically turn their attentions to T CrB when the time comes and record its explosion in optical, radio, x-ray and other wavelengths of light. Amateur astronomers are on the case, too. “Our members love things that go boom,” says Brian Kloppenborg , an astrophysicist at the American Association of Variable Star Observers in Cambridge, Mass. “I get an e-mail once every 10 minutes with some new observations.”

Such full-spectrum vigilance could transform T CrB from a cosmic oddity to an answer key for riddles applicable to all novae. For example, how hasty are their outbursts? X-ray astronomy can help with that. When an eruption happens, “you have this hot, glowing fireball,” König says, one that emits x-rays. As it expands, the white dwarf’s expelled shell cools down and subsequently emits optical radiation. The time difference between the x-ray and optical flashes can clock how fast the jettisoned material is moving.

Cosmic cataclysms of all sorts also produce neutrinos , almost-massless particles that can reveal otherwise-hidden internal details of the formidable processes that unleashed them. But they are notoriously hard to detect, and to date, “no neutrino has been recorded from any nova,” says Ulisse Munari , an astronomer at the University of Padua in Italy. But knowing when and where a neutrino-making nova will flare up certainly helps. “There’s actually a real chance that current-generation neutrino detectors can detect T CrB,” Schaefer says. If this turns out to be the case, scientists could gain a new view of the explosive physics of all novae.

Yet it’s arguably not how novae explode but what they may become that most animates many astronomers. “The aspect I find the most exciting is the potential of novae as progenitors of type 1a supernovae,” Healy-Kalesh says. Like standard novae, this flavor of supernovae involves mass exchange between a pair of stars, at least one of which is a gas-guzzling white dwarf. Yet their resulting thermonuclear detonation is so immense that the matter-accreting white dwarf is blown to smithereens.

One of the prevailing models for a type 1a supernova involves a white dwarf that has gorged itself on so much stellar matter that its mass increases to 1.4 times that of the sun—something known as the Chandrasekhar limit. Beyond this threshold, the white dwarf becomes too bulky to support its own weight, triggering a thermonuclear cascade that causes it to explosively self-destruct. The key question, then, is: “How do these white dwarfs accrete enough material to surpass the Chandrasekhar limit?” König says. And because type 1a supernovae in principle all blow up the same way regardless of their cosmic coordinates, their detonations serve as important ticks on astronomers’ rulers for gauging vast intergalactic distances; teasing out any quirks in the similar-but-smaller explosions of regular, not-so-super novae, then, could lead to subtle tweaks to type 1a-based (mis)measurements of the universe .

Researchers are also eager to study the recurrent mechanics of run-of-the-mill novae, which may change over time if or when a white dwarf’s gathered matter isn’t entirely consumed or ejected during each of its explosions. “How much of that matter stays on the white dwarf? How much is blown off in a nova?” says Deanne Coppejans , an astrophysicist at the University of Warwick in England. This apocalyptic balance sheet can be checked during T CrB’s next outburst: the white dwarf is mainly made of carbon and oxygen, while the red giant is donating hydrogen, providing a bulk ingredients list from which relative proportions within a nova’s ejecta can be ascertained.

Astronomers are also aiming to use T CrB’s imminent eruption to understand this specific nova’s three baffling idiosyncrasies. “No other novae that we know exhibit such behaviors,” says Vladislav Marchev , an astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy in Bulgaria.

Most novae stay dim, dramatically brightening only during an eruption—but not T CrB. Its first oddity is that for about a decade both before and after an explosion, it exists in a “high state” of modest brightness, emitting “a hot, blue, violent light,” Schaefer says. “Why does the high state turn off? For that matter, why does the high state turn on? We don’t have the faintest idea as to what’s going on.”

The second strange feature is its pre-eruption brightness dip, which happens about a year prior to the eruption. “It’s a weird, unprecedented mystery—and it’s also a harbinger of an upcoming eruption,” Schaefer says. Some have suggested that as the white dwarf’s accreted matter is approaching its “well done” phase, it gains a “char” of sorts, a veil of dust that obscures the scorching-hot bonfire below. Perhaps “T CrB is ejecting gas prior to its eruption, which goes on to form shells of dust and blocks out light from the central system, causing the pre-eruption dip,” Healy-Kalesh says.

Third, a couple of months after T CrB’s explosion, it seems to produce a secondary eruption —bright but not rising to the brightness of the initial outburst—that can last for several weeks or months. “The secondary maximum has been a long-lasting mystery,” Munari says. But he offers a possible solution in a recent preprint : it’s an illusion, not another eruption.

During its accretionary phase and its outburst, the white dwarf is flambéing the visible hemisphere of the red giant. After the eruption, the white dwarf may be cooling down, but the red giant’s conflagration-facing side is still sizzling—and when that hot hemisphere faces Earth, astronomers glimpse that glow and erroneously perceive it to be a second eruption. “I think it might be true,” Schafer says. And when T CrB actually unleashes its hellfire, everyone will be able to assess Munari’s idea.

Altogether this eruption is “truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Kloppenborg says—a chance for astronomers to find answers to century-old questions. “We’re going to throw everything at it,” Schaefer says. Nothing exhilarates him more, however, than the opportunity to show the public that deep-space astronomy isn’t esoteric but something tangible. “This will be visible for anyone,” he says. “Anyone can go out and look at it. That might be the most exciting thing about this.”

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The Night Sky Will Soon Get ‘a New Star.’ Here’s How to See It.

A nova named T Coronae Borealis lit up the night about 80 years ago, and astronomers say it’s expected to put on another show in the coming months.

An artist’s animation of what occurs when a red giant star and a white dwarf produce a nova. Credit... By NASA

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By Robin George Andrews

• March 8, 2024

If you keep a close eye on the night sky in the weeks and months ahead, you may spot something new. It will shine as bright as Polaris, the North Star, for no longer than a week before fading back into darkness.

This ephemeral lighthouse is T Coronae Borealis, often referred to as T CrB . It is a nova, a nuclear explosion bursting forth from the pallid corpse of a long-dead star. Some people might have seen it before — the same beguiling sight lit up our heavens almost 80 years ago — and future generations may see it in another 80 years.

To any world nearby, a nova would be apocalyptic. But to stargazers in our world, some 3,000 light-years away, it “is a fun and exciting upcoming cataclysm,” said Bradley Schaefer , an astrophysicist at Louisiana State University.

Here is everything you need to know about this event: what it is, when it will appear and where to glimpse it.

What is a nova?

There are more than 400 known novas in the Milky Way galaxy. They result from the explosive pairing between a normal type of star — for example, a main sequence furnace like Earth’s sun or an elephantine red giant — and a white dwarf, a smoldering stellar core left behind after a star’s demise. The two are gravitationally bound companions destined to unleash a fiery blast into the cosmos.

White dwarfs are relatively small, but they are also so dense that their intense gravitational pulls steal hydrogen-rich matter from a nearby regular star. That volatile material tumbles onto the surface of the white dwarf and, begins to pile up after a while, squashing the lower layers and raising their temperature.

Eventually, that compressed matter “gets past the kindling temperature of hydrogen,” Dr. Schaefer said. It ignites, raising the temperature of the accreted material even further. Past a certain point, a runaway nuclear reaction begins, setting off an apocalyptic blast.

“These novae are basically hydrogen bombs,” Dr. Schaefer said.

But don’t confuse a nova with its more violent sibling, the supernova, which permanently destroys a star and angrily casts off its outer layers. After a nova’s nuclear embers dim, the cycle starts anew, with the white dwarf once again gorging its way toward another explosion.

What is T Coronae Borealis, and how do we know when it will explode?

T CrB is a nova that results when a white dwarf peels off enough of the outer layers of a red giant star that is about 74 times the size of our sun.

The nova last exploded in 1946. Astronomers also observed it erupting in 1866, and historical reports show that it was spotted in 1787 and 1217.

Most novas have explosive cycles that last many millenniums. But T CrB is impatient — a voracious consumer of its red giant’s stellar fuel. Past observations indicate that it erupts once every 80 years, which makes it a recurrent nova — one that flares up at least once per century.

Previous observations of T CrB have also shown that the nova blazes and convulses in a particularly erratic manner in the years leading up to an eruption, and things appear to be no different this time around: Its activity over the past decade or so suggests it is gearing up for an imminent explosion, one that will take place anytime between now and September.

Where in the night sky will I be able to see it?

T CrB will appear in the Corona Borealis constellation, which is bordered by Hercules and Bootes. When it “blows its stack, it’ll be as bright as the North Star and it will be visible for a few days,” said Bill Cooke, the Meteoroid Environments Office lead at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

“You’re going to notice a new star in the sky,” he added, viewable with the unaided eye.

Don’t miss it. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence,” Dr. Cooke said. “How often can people say that they’ve seen a star explode?”

What’s Up in Space and Astronomy

Keep track of things going on in our solar system and all around the universe..

Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other 2024 event  that’s out of this world with  our space and astronomy calendar .

A nova named T Coronae Borealis lit up the night about 80 years ago. Astronomers say it’s expected to put on another show  in the coming months.

Voyager 1, the 46-year-old first craft in interstellar space which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth, may have gone dark .

Two spacecraft have ended up askew on the moon this year, illustrating that it’s not so easy to land upright on the lunar surface. Here is why .

What do you call a galaxy without stars? In addition to dark matter and dark energy, we now have dark galaxies  — collections of stars so sparse and faint that they are all but invisible.

Is Pluto a planet? And what is a planet, anyway? Test your knowledge here .

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‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence’: Rare cosmic outburst to occur in mid-2024

The nova outburst is expected to occur by september and will be visible with the naked eye for days.

By Margaret Darby

A rare cosmic explosion, known as a nova, is expected to take place anytime from now until September, according to NASA . The nova explosion should be visible to the naked eye, though it will occur 3,000 lightyears away from Earth.

The nova on the brink of an outburst is known as T Coronae Borealis. It is located in the Milky Way between the Boötes and Hercules constellations, per Space .

What causes a nova explosion?

Nova outbursts occur when a white dwarf, the core of a dead star, becomes trapped in the orbit of a red giant star. Though relatively small, the white dwarf is dense enough to steal hydrogen-rich stellar material from the red giant star.

The process causes the white dwarf to heat up — eventually triggering a visible bright flash known as a nova explosion.

“As matter accumulates on the surface of the white dwarf, it heats up and you get higher and higher pressure until bang — it’s a runaway reaction,” Bradley Schaefer, a professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University, told NBC News . ”It’s going to be bright in the sky, so it’ll be easily visible from your backyard.”

“These novae are basically hydrogen bombs,” Schaefer told The New York Times .

Nova explosion vs. a supernova

This cosmic event is not to be confused with a supernova , which occurs when a star explodes and dies. A nova eruption does not end in the creation of or destruction of a star. Following the upcoming nova explosion, the white dwarf star will restart the process, gathering hydrogen matter until the time comes for another eruption, per Space .

T Coronae Borealis is a recurrent nova because the upcoming cosmic explosion reoccurs roughly once every eight decades. The last visible nova eruption occurred in 1946.

“This could be a once-in-a-lifetime viewing opportunity as the nova outburst only occurs about every 80 years,” NASA wrote in a statement .

“Once its brightness peaks, it should be visible to the unaided eye for several days and just over a week with binoculars before it dims again, possibly for another 80 years.”

Most nova eruptions are completely unpredictable, William J. Cooke, the Meteoroid Environments Office lead at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, explained to CNN .

“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.”

After the eruption takes place, its brightest views will follow for the next 24 hours, eventually reaching a similar brightness to the North Star, Schaefer explained to NBC News .

“You’re going to notice a new star in the sky,” Cooke told The New York Times . “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence,” Cooke added. “How often can people say that they’ve seen a star explode?”

Condor Array Telescope confirms Chinese astrology records of 'new star' spotted in 77 BCE

The first data from a new telescope array is in.

The Condor Array has revealed a stunning look at a distant dwarf nova — a scene that offers astronomers a new, very-low-brightness view of the universe to marvel over.

Condor is comprised of six refracting telescopes , which are united by computers to form a giant telescope conglomerate that can detect and study objects too faint to be seen with a normal. single telescope. One of the first missions assigned to Condor was to focus on the dwarf nova named Z Camelopardalis . In particular, American Museum of Natural History researcher Michael M. Shara wanted to know if this dwarf nova has anything to do with a "new star" that Chinese Imperial astrologers recorded in the year 77 BCE.

Not only did the new telescope array strengthen this link, but it also discovered intriguing, never-seen-before features of the dwarf nova. Since it was first observed in visible light by astronomer Henry Park Hollis in 1904, the object has been studied in great detail. So, finding new information about it is pretty exciting.

Related: Why astronomers are worried about 2 major telescopes right now

Shy novas coming out of their shells

Dwarf novas are a distinct class of supernova explosion that happens in one of two ways. 

The first way has to do with a white dwarf stellar remnant gradually siphoning matter from a companion star to its own surface. Such siphoning goes on until the process triggers a thermonuclear blast. The second path that can lead to a dwarf nova, on the other hand, has to do with a huge amount of material from a companion star suddenly getting "dumped" on the white dwarf with the same thermonuclear result. 

In January of 2007, an image of Z Camelopardalis, taken by the 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory , seemed to show it is surrounded by a partial shell of gas that may have been emitted during that thermonuclear explosion. 

To test this idea, Shara and colleagues imaged Z Camelopardalis with Condor in November of 2021 and compared this to the 2007 image. This allowed them to measure how much the shell had expanded over time and thus the speed at which its gas moved outwards. 

This confirmed to the team that the shell was expanding at a rate consistent with an explosion that occurred around 2,000 years ago, suggesting this explosion could indeed be the "new star" seen in 77 BCE China. 

Shara and the team were astonished to see Condor had been able to distinguish the complete shell of gas around Z Camelopardalis. The new telescope array also saw a second, larger (but fainter) shell of gas around the dwarf nova. Such a shell is something just too dim to be seen with conventional telescopes.

"This is the first example ever found of two concentric shells surrounding a dwarf nova, and it confirms a long-standing hypothesis that concentric shells must surround frequently erupting novae of relatively massive white dwarfs," Shara said.

However, this wasn't the extent of the nova discoveries revealed in Condor's first data drop. 

Using the telescope, Stonybrook University professor Kenneth M. Lanzetta and team spotted another extremely faint shell of gas surrounding a " recurrent nova ." This class of nova is also caused by white dwarfs gathering matter and becoming unstable, but the explosions repeatedly occur on a timescale of less than 100 years.

One recurrent nova, M31N 2008-12a, is located in the closest large galaxy to the Milky Way, Andromeda . It erupts every year and is surrounded by a vast "super-remnant" made of dust shells that expand outward for around 44 million light-years. Other recurrent novas should also be surrounded by these shells — but, until now, they have proved elusive.

Lanzetta and colleagues spotted a shell around the recurrent nova KT Eridani (KT Eri), which blows its top every 40 to 50 years. This shell is around 50 times larger than previously observed nova shells, the team says, and appears to be the result of multiple nova shells crashing into each other over the course of tens of thousands of years.                               

There are more treats in the first batch of Condor data too, with Lanzetta and colleagues also using the telescope to study stellar streams around the galaxy NGC 5907 , a well-known spiral galaxy located some 50 million light-years from Earth. These streams of stars are created when the larger galaxies that satellite galaxies orbit gravitationally tug on the satellites, disrupting them and drawing out stars. 

Condor followed up on two previous images of NGC 5907, located 50 million light years from Earth. One in 2010 showed stellar streams forming two helix-like loops around the galaxy, but another in 2019 lacked these features. 

Like the latter image, the Condor observation of NGC 5907 seemed to lack this helix-like feature, too. The team suggested that it was an artifact related to the image processing of the 2010 image.

The Condor Array Telescope findings are published across a series of four papers published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society