Earth will see a star explosion

In the constellation Corona Borealis, which is located three thousand light years from Earth, a so-called “new” star should soon appear. The flash will be visible to the naked eye, the BBC reports , citing NASA employees.

According to the publication's interlocutors, the constellation of the Northern Crown is a system in which two stars rotate together around a common center of mass. One of them is a white dwarf (a star about the size of the Earth, but with a mass almost like that of the Sun), the other is a red giant, reaching the end of its life. As the giant's temperature and pressure rise, it begins to shed its outer layers, and the white dwarf collects this material on its surface. Eventually, the dwarf's atmosphere heats up so much that a thermonuclear reaction begins in it, which leads to a flare visible from Earth, NASA explains on its website. This explosion is called “nova”.

The BBC calls it a rare cosmic phenomenon: flares in the constellation Corona Borealis occur about once every 80 years, most recently in 1946. The explosion is expected to occur no later than September this year.

“I'm quite excited. This thing is similar to Halley’s comet - it also arrives once every 75-80 years - but journalists pay much less attention to the “new” ones. We know that before going nova, a star dims for about a year, and Tau Corona (a white dwarf in a binary system) began dimming in March 2023, so we believe that it will explode no later than the end of September." , said one of the leaders of NASA, William Jay Cook.

According to Meredith McGregor, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, such explosions typically occur once every few thousand years. “But Northern Crown Tau seems to do it much faster, which makes it exceptional,” she added.

The flare will be visible from Earth with the naked eye. According to the BBC, it will be similar in brightness to the North Star. According to NASA's William Cook, the explosion will be visible for at least several days, perhaps up to a week. To see the flash, you need to find the constellation Corona Northern in the sky - this is a small semicircular arc near Hercules and Bootes.

Technically, a new star is not formed in the explosion, said Johns Hopkins University's McGregor: “It's a star that already exists. It's always been there, but to us it looks like a new star has suddenly appeared because we usually can't see it. White dwarfs are so small that they cannot be seen with the naked eye. Temporarily, it is the thermonuclear fusion reaction going on there that helps us see them. Anyone can leave the house at night and find it in the sky,” she explained.

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