ANTARIKSA — A nova explosion that can be seen with the naked eye is expected to grace our night sky in 2024. Its light offers a rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe beautiful skies.
The star system that offers us that opportunity is known as T Coronae Borealis (T CrB). It is located about 3,000 light years from Earth and consists of a red giant star and a white dwarf orbiting each other.
Red giants are stars that are swelling and about to explode, while white dwarfs or neutron stars are the stellar cores left over from red giant explosions. Imagine, these two old, dying stars are orbiting each other.
When a white dwarf steals enough material from a red giant star, it triggers a brief flash of nuclear fusion on its surface. This would result in what is known as a nova explosion. That’s smaller than a supernova, which is an explosion of the white dwarf itself.
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The explosion will be visible in the constellation Corona Borealis, also known as the Northern Crown, which forms a semicircular star. The explosion is expected to occur between February and September 2024.
According to NASA, the explosion will appear as bright as the North Star in our night sky for a week. A little info: The North Star is Polaris, the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor, which is located very close to the north celestial pole.
“This could be a once-in-a-lifetime viewing opportunity because nova explosions only occur once every 80 years,” NASA officials said in a statement.
The repeating nova last exploded in 1946. It was just one of five novae observed in the Milky Way galaxy. To see the explosion, you have to look at Corona Borealis, which is located between the constellations Bootes and Hercules. The explosion will appear like a bright new star in the night sky.
Generally, binary stars are +10 magnitude, which is too faint to see with the naked eye. However, during the explosion, the star system would have a magnitude of +2, which is comparable to the brightness of the North Star, Polaris.
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“When its brightness reaches peak, it will be visible to the naked eye for several days and more than a week using binoculars, before dimming again over the next 80 years,” NASA officials said.
The two gravitationally bound stars are close enough that, when the red giant becomes unstable due to increasing temperature and pressure, it ejects its outer layers towards the white dwarf. The accumulation of matter heats the white dwarf’s dense atmosphere until it triggers thermonuclear reactions that produce the novae we see from Earth.
2024-03-13 14:57:00
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