Some time before September, a massive explosion 3,000 light years from Earth is to flare up in the night sky, giving amateur astronomers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness this space oddity.
The binary star system in the constellation Corona Borealis — “northern crown” — is normally too dim to see with the naked eye.
Every 80 years or so, exchanges between its two stars, which are locked in a deadly embrace, spark a runaway nuclear explosion. The light from the blast travels through the cosmos and makes it appear as if a new star — as bright as the North Star, according to NASA — has suddenly popped up into the night sky for a few days.
Photo: AFP
It would be at least the third time that humans have witnessed this event, which was first discovered by Irish polymath John Birmingham in 1866, then reappeared in 1946.
The appropriately named Sumner Starrfield, an astronomer at Arizona State University, said that he was excited to see the nova’s “outburst.”
After all, he has worked on T Coronae Borealis — also known as the “Blaze Star” — on and off since the 1960s.
Starrfield is rushing to finish a scientific paper predicting what astronomers will find out about the recurring nova whenever it shows up in the next five months.
“I could be today ... but I hope it’s not,” he said with a laugh.
There are only about 10 recurring novas in the Milky Way and surrounding galaxies, Starrfield said.
Normal novas explode “maybe every 100,000 years,” but recurrent novas repeat their outbursts on a human timeline because of a peculiar relationship between their two stars, he said.
One is a cool dying star called a red giant, which has burnt through its hydrogen and has hugely expanded — a fate that is awaiting our own sun in about 5 billion years.
The other is a white dwarf, a later stage in the death of a star, after all the atmosphere has blown away and only the incredibly dense core remains.
Their size disparity is so huge that it takes T Coronae Borealis’ white dwarf 227 days to orbit its red giant, Starrfield said.
The two are so close that matter being ejected by the red giant collects near the surface of the white dwarf.
Once the mass roughly of Earth has built up on the white dwarf — which takes about 80 years — it heats up enough to start a runaway thermonuclear reaction, Starrfield said.
This ends up in a “big explosion and within a few seconds the temperature goes up 100-200 million degrees” Celsius, said Joachim Krautter, a retired German astronomer who has studied the nova.
The James Webb Space Telescope would be just one of the many eyes that turn toward the outburst of T Coronae Borealis once it begins, Krautter said.
However, you do not need such advanced technology to witness this rare event — whenever it might happen.
“You simply have to go out and look in the direction of the Corona Borealis,” Krautter said.
Some lucky sky gazers are already preparing for the year’s biggest astronomic event tomorrow, when a rare total solar eclipse is to occur across a strip of the US.
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) purge of his most senior general is driven by his effort to both secure “total control” of his military and root out corruption, US Ambassador to China David Perdue said told Bloomberg Television yesterday. The probe into Zhang Youxia (張又俠), Xi’s second-in-command, announced over the weekend, is a “major development,” Perdue said, citing the family connections the vice chair of China’s apex military commission has with Xi. Chinese authorities said Zhang was being investigated for suspected serious discipline and law violations, without disclosing further details. “I take him at his word that there’s a corruption effort under
China executed 11 people linked to Myanmar criminal gangs, including “key members” of telecom scam operations, state media reported yesterday, as Beijing toughens its response to the sprawling, transnational industry. Fraud compounds where scammers lure Internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar. Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from victims around the world. Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work. In the past few years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation
RSS