Get Ready to Watch This Star Explode
Keep your eyes peeled, because a dim star is about to quite literally go nuclear. And guess what? Its outburst will be visible to the naked eye, providing a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness a rare stellar explosion known as a nova.
The star, T Coronae Borealis, is believed to erupt roughly every 80 years. After closely monitoring its activity, astronomer Jean Schneider at the Paris Observatory has calculated that it'll erupt again this Thursday, March 27, according to a paper he published with the American Astronomical Society last year.
Prepare to give our scientific minds some leeway, however. T Coronae Borealis was predicted to go nova last year, after it exhibited dips in brightness, a telltale sign of an impending explosion, but the blast never came.
Now, armed with more data, Schneider has narrowed the several-month window of previous predictions by others in the field down to a single day. If this week's a no-show, the next possible date this year will be November 10, 2025.
Astronomers are excited, but stress that it's not guaranteed.
"Since last September, detailed observations of the star have revealed variations that suggest the imminent arrival of this long-awaited explosion," Franck Marchis, a SETI Institute astronomer who was not involved in the work, recently told Forbes. "However, as the study is still theoretical, its conclusions remain uncertain."
T Coronae Borealis, which is located just 3,000 light years away, is a binary star system comprising a white dwarf star and a red giant star. In the night sky, though, they appear as one.
Tragically, they make for a toxic pairing. White dwarfs are the dense remnants of a massive star, while red giants are the slowly bloating forms of a more average Sun-like star long past its prime, having burned through all its fuel.
Things get heated when they orbit too close to each other. Over time, the powerful gravitational pull of the white dwarf siphons huge amounts of mass from its stellar companion. Once enough of this stellar material, chiefly hydrogen, accumulates on the white dwarf's surface, it erupts in an epic thermonuclear explosion — a nova. The cosmic hydrogen bomb doesn't destroy the stars, however. They sustain the tensions in a cycle of eruptions.
In T Coronae Borealis's case, the explosion will be powerful enough to elevate the star system from a measly magnitude +10 in brightness, at which it's invisible to the naked eye, to magnitude +2, according to NASA. That's bright enough to rival the North Star, Polaris.
If you want to actually watch this nova in action, here's what you should know. After sunset, it'll appear as a new star in the constellation Corona Borealis, wedged between the constellations Hercules and Boötes.
And don't fret if Thursday doesn't pan out. The nova should be visible to the unaided eye for several days, and over a week with binoculars. Happy hunting.
More on stars: James Webb Space Telescope Captures Images of Individual Planets in Distant Star System
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