by A long-dead star is expected to soon go nova, making it visible in the evening sky for a short time. It’s not
Every 80 years or so, the star system T Coronae Borealis – or T CrB for short – violently explodes, reviving a long-dead star.
Earlier this year, there were strong indications that T CrB was ready to create this new star visible for a few days. It hasn’t happened yet, but history suggests it’s only a matter of time.
Exact predictions can be tricky when you’re talking about something happening 3,000 light years away.
Red giant + white dwarf
The T CrB system is actually two stars. More than half of the stars we see in the night sky have one or more partners.
It consists of a red giant, a star in the final stages of its life, swollen to hundreds of times its original size. Our own Sun will be here in about 5 billion years.
The other is a white dwarf, an incredibly dense remnant of a dead, Earth-sized star. Since 1946, this dark and dense white dwarf has been siphoning stellar matter from its red giant partner, like a vampire.
But the dead star can only draw so much of its companion’s life force. Once it reaches critical mass, the surface layers explode in an event called a nova, which makes it visible to the naked eye for a few days.
Records of permeable T CrB nova events date back over 800 years. A man named Burchard wrote in 1217 that he had observed “a faint star which for a time shone with great light” from his home in Ursberg, Germany.
Amateur astronomers and professional scientists eagerly await this event.
“Typically, nova events are so faint and distant that it is difficult to clearly identify where the erupting energy is concentrated,” explained Dr. Elizabeth Hays, head of NASA’s Astroparticle Physics Laboratory. Goddard. “This one will be very close, with lots of eyes on it, studying the different wavelengths and hopefully providing us with data to start unlocking the specific structure and processes involved.” We can’t wait to get a full picture of what’s going on.
How and when to find T CrB
T CrB will be visible to the naked eye, but it is not known exactly when: it could take days, weeks, or even months.
Once visible, T CrB, also known as the “Blazing Star,” will appear between the bright stars Vega and Arcturus in the western sky after sunset. If this happens in the coming weeks, Venus can also serve as a guide.
We don’t know exactly when this will happen, but it could happen soon.
Nova or supernova?
It will be a nova, not a supernova.
Unlike supernovas, which destroy the star, novas only eject accumulated layers of stellar material and can occur again and again. Novas brighten for days at most, while supernovas brighten significantly for several months.
Recent changes to Betelgeuse, a red supergiant star in the constellation Orion, have fueled speculation that it could “soon” become a supernova. A 2023 paper studied the star’s brightening and dimming and concluded that a “supernova explosion is expected within a few decades.”
