Global professionals and amateur astronomers are waiting for an once-in-a-lifetime nova explosion which will occur in September, 3,000 light-years from the Earth.
About Nova Explosion:
It is the dramatic instance of a star exploding as it interacts with another, nearby star.
It’s a one of many, repeated moments during the long, slow, death of two neighboring stars in the same system.
Astronomers are waiting for the fiery explosion of T Coronae Borealis, also dubbed the “Blaze Star” and known to astronomers as “T CrB”.
For T CrB, this nova event happens roughly every 80 years — it's like Halley’s Comet event every 76 years — so, astronomers call T CrB a “recurrent” nova.
They believe T CrB’s prior eruptions were observed as long ago as December 1787 and even in October 1217 AD.
When T CrB erupts, its luminosity will increase dramatically, making it visible to the naked eye for several days.
Process
The system contains two stars — a white dwarf and a red giant.
The white dwarf is an incredibly dense remnant of a once larger star. It’s about the size of planet Earth but with the same mass as our sun.
Its neighbor, the red giant, is in its final years of existence and is slowly being stripped of hydrogen by the gravitational pull of the denser white dwarf.
This star “cannibalism” causes a tremendous buildup of pressure and heat, which eventually triggers a huge thermonuclear explosion.
The explosion doesn’t completely destroy the stars, however, and so this event repeats over time. It can carry on for hundreds of thousands of years.
Different nova events have different cycles, ranging from a few years to hundreds of thousands of years.
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