An impending nova event will be so bright that people on Earth will be able to see the burst of light with the naked eye, NASA scientists said. There’s an Earth-sized remnant of a dead star with a mass comparable to the sun on a star about 3,000 light years from Earth that’s expected to explode at some point this summer, according to NASA. The exact date when that will happen is unknown, although NASA continues to track it.
The spectacular explosion is “a once-in-a-lifetime event,” NASA’s nova expert Rebekah Hounsell said, “that will create a lot of new astronomers out there, giving young people a cosmic event they can observe for themselves, ask their own questions, and collect their own data.” Hounsell is an assistant research scientist specializing in nova events at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. She put this summer’s event on the “Blaze Star” into historical perspective.
“There are a few recurrent novae 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,” she said in a statement. “It’s incredibly exciting to have this front-row seat.”
This is a nova event, which Hounsell explained is different from a supernova, which is a “final, titanic explosion” that destroys dying stars, NASA said in a press release. In this particular event, the dwarf star will remain intact, but “accumulated material” will be blasted into the abyss of space in a “blinding flash,” according to NASA, which explains that this cycle repeats over time and can carry on for tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.
NASA has provided three tips for American stargazers. Firstly, the burst of light will be “brief,” according to NASA, but it’s expected to be visible to the naked eye for a little less than a week. Secondly, the exact timing of the nova is unknown as of mid-June. “Recurrent novae are unpredictable and contrarian,” said Koji Mukai, another astrophysicist at NASA Goddard. When scientists think they have nailed down a set pattern, novae can “deviate from it completely.”
Finding where to look could be tricky, but NASA suggested first locating the Northern Crown, a horseshoe-shaped curve of stars west of the Hercules constellation as the starting point. The two brightest stars in the Northern Hemisphere (Arcturus and Vega) create a straight line from one to the other, which will lead stargazers to the Hercules constellation and Corona Borealis, where the burst of light will be most visible.
Two facts about the history of the ‘Blaze Star’ include that the first recorded sighting was in 1217, and the last sighting was in 1946. NASA scientists are eager to observe this event and encourage citizen scientists to contribute their observations to enhance their findings.
Elizabeth Hays, chief of the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory at NASA Goddard, highlighted the importance of collecting data during the early rise to eruption as well as at the event’s peak and decline. This upcoming cosmic event presents a unique opportunity for scientists and enthusiasts to witness a rare spectacle in the night sky.