A stellar explosion may create a temporary ‘new star’ this summer (2024)
Keep your eyes on the night sky this summer, scanning for the constellation Corona Borealis, and if you are lucky, you may glimpse what appears to be a new star winking on in the dark.
The brightening point of light will not be a new star, but a nova eruption about 3,000 light-years from Earth. There, a white dwarf star orbiting a red giant tears material from its larger companion. When enough mass collects on the white dwarf’s surface, the rising pressure and temperature will trigger a blast that can be seen from Earth with the naked eye — but for only a few days to a week.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” says Gerardo Juan Manuel Luna, an astronomer at the Universidad Nacional De Hurlingham in Argentina. “We are in the right time, in the right moment, with the right instruments.”
The white dwarf and red giant constitute a binary system known as T Corona Borealis, or T CrB. Astronomers believe that the nova will occur anytime between now and September. T CrB repeats its eruption about every 80 years. The last time this happened was in 1946 (SN: 2/23/46).
Novas take their name from astronomer Tycho Brahe’s 1573 report of a new object in the constellation Cassiopeia titled De Nova Stella, Latin for “On the New Star.” Astronomers today know that these nova stella are in fact blasts from white dwarfs, the dense leftover cores of stars that have shed their outer layers. When a white dwarf siphons material from a nearby companion star, the accreted mass can trigger a nova (SN: 2/12/21).
T CrB experienced a sudden brightening in recent years that astronomers call a “super active” phase followed by an apparent dip in activity, which signals the nova is probably imminent. The same pattern was observed before T CrB burst in 1946 and 1866.
Here’s where to look for the new star
The constellation Corona Borealis, which is Latin for “Northern Crown,” consists of seven stars in an arc resembling the letter C (toward the left in this image). Positioned between the bright stars Vega and Arcturus, it is visible high overhead during summer evenings in the Northern Hemisphere while appearing close to the northern horizon in much of the Southern Hemisphere. To find theNorthern Crown, trace an arcing line from the handle of the Big Dipper to Arcturus (bright spot bottom right), and then look for thesemicircle of stars nearby to the east. The nova will appear just outside this semicircle.
This time around, scientists plan to get a better view of the nearby nova than ever before. Dozens of telescopes around the world and orbiting in space, spanning the entire electromagnetic spectrum, will fix T CrB in their sights in an effort to unravel the mysteries of these cosmic blasts.
“We hope to be able to answer questions with this object that then might be relevant to all the other accreting and eruptive white dwarfs,” says Jennifer Sokoloski, an astrophysicist at Columbia University.
One of the main questions is whether the white dwarf in T CrB gains or loses mass following each successive nova. The eruption will eject material into space, but some of the mass ripped from the red giant may sink into the white dwarf, causing the small but dense star to gain mass over time. If this is the case, then repeating novas such as this one might ultimately lead to even bigger explosions called type 1a supernovas, which play an important role in the evolution of star systems and entire galaxies.
“That’s the holy grail,” Luna says. “After the eruption, say in the next five years when things are calmed down, we should be able to measure the mass again and see what happened.”
Additional unsolved mysteries include how shock waves from the nova will propagate through a nebula of gas surrounding the red giant and whether dust will form in this extreme environment — a key part of understanding where the dust that forms stars and planets comes from, Luna says. Astronomers will also be on the lookout for high-energy gamma rays, which were first detected from a nova in the binary system V407 Cygni in 2010 (SN: 10/8/14).
“That was a complete shock,” says Justin Linford, an astrophysicist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, N.M. “Nobody in the nova community thought these things had enough energy to reach gamma ray levels.”
There will be little warning before the eruption of T CrB — and scientists can’t be completely sure that it will even happen in the coming months. “Maybe we’ll sit here holding our breath for the next 10 years,” Sokoloski says.
But if T CrB’s past behavior repeats itself, then those who find a dark place to view Corona Borealis at the right moment could be the first to see this cosmic spectacle burst to life.
“My bet,” Luna says, “is that this event is going to be detected by amateurs first.”
As long as the fusion process continues, the energy released counters the effect of gravity, but when the fuel runs out, the star collapses under its own weight. Its interior collapses to form a small but very massive neutron star, onto which the outer parts fall and bounce off. An explosion has occurred.
Known together as T Coronae Borealis, also named the "Blaze Star," the white dwarf and red giant forecasted to create a nova this summer compose a binary star system in the Northern Crown, located around 3,000 light-years from Earth.
In the second half of 2024, a nova explosion in the star system called T Coronae Borealis, or T CrB, will once again be visible to people on Earth. T CrB will appear 1,500 times brighter than usual, but it won't be as spectacular as the event in 1054.
Supernovae are a major source of elements in the interstellar medium from oxygen to rubidium. The expanding shock waves of supernovae can trigger the formation of new stars. Supernovae are a major source of cosmic rays. They might also produce gravitational waves.
When and where can we see T Corona Borealis? The star is expected to explode sometime between now and September, and it's expected to remain bright for up to a week. Find the star in the constellation Corona Borealis, a U-shaped string of stars that resembles a crown.
Most stars have enough fuel to last billions of years. When hydrogen runs out, stars that are about the size of the Sun expand and become a red giant — up to one hundred times their original diameter. As a red giant loses heat its core loses mass, blowing off outer layers and shrinking to become a white dwarf star.
The T CrB nova was last seen from Earth in 1946. Its behavior over the past decade appears strikingly similar to observed behavior in a similar timeframe leading up to the 1946 eruption. If the pattern continues, some researchers say, the nova event could occur by September 2024.
Type Ia supernovae are thought to be potentially the most dangerous if they occur close enough to the Earth. Because Type Ia supernovae arise from dim, common white dwarf stars, it is likely that a supernova that could affect the Earth will occur unpredictably and take place in a star system that is not well studied.
The Kepler supernova, which occurred 400 years ago, is the last supernova seen inside the disk of our Milky Way. So, statistically, we are overdue for witnessing another stellar blast. Curiously, the Kepler supernova was seen to explode 30 years after Tycho Brahe witnessed a stellar explosion in our galaxy.
A red dwarf, which is half as massive as the sun, can last 80 to 100 billion years, which is far longer than the universe's age of 13.8 billion years. This long lifetime is one reason red dwarfs are considered to be good sources for planets hosting life, because they are stable for such a long time.
"There are a few recurrent novas with very short cycles, but typically, we don't often see a repeated outburst in a human lifetime, and rarely one so relatively close to our own system," Dr. Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist specializing in nova events at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a ...
If a supernova explosion were to occur within about 25 light-years of Earth, our planet would probably lose its atmosphere, and all life would perish. However, astronomers haven't found any dangerous supernova candidates in our cosmic backyard, so there's no reason to worry.
There isn't any sound in space, (contrary to what you might have heard in Star Wars), so any sound effects on earth would occur after the particles and light rays reached the earth's atmosphere.
Stellar evolution is the process by which a star undergoes a sequence of radical changes during its lifetime. Depending on the mass of the star, this lifetime ranges from only a few million years for the most massive to trillions of years for the least massive, which is considerably longer than the age of the universe.
This collapse produces the explosion we call a supernova. Supernovae are so powerful they create new atomic nuclei. As a massive star collapses, it produces a shockwave that can induce fusion in the star's outer shell. These fusion reactions create new atomic nuclei in a process called nucleosynthesis.
Inside stellar nebulae, space dust, hydrogen, helium and plasma swirl around and stick together and form into large blobs. These blobs eventually collapse and the stuff inside begins to heat up. As more particles are pulled into the hot center, they eventually become a star.
Because of the slower speeds, these stars collide with one another but then don't have enough energy to escape. Instead, they merge to become more massive. In some cases, they might even merge multiple times to become 10 times more massive than our sun. "A few stars win the collision lottery," Rose said.
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