{"id":22151,"date":"2024-05-09T11:27:52","date_gmt":"2024-05-09T15:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=22151"},"modified":"2024-05-09T11:27:52","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T15:27:52","slug":"what-we-should-know-about-the-new-star-coming-to-the-sky-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/05\/what-we-should-know-about-the-new-star-coming-to-the-sky-this-year","title":{"rendered":"What We Should Know About the ‘New’ Star Coming to the Sky This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Solar eclipse fans still riding their high from\u00a0totality\u00a0have something else to look forward to this year, which could also be a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event to witness.\u00a0A dance between two stars 3,000 light years away will culminate in a massive explosion so bright it will create the appearance of a “new” star in the night sky seen by the naked eye for several days and with a telescope for weeks. Astronomers expect this\u00a0Nova explosion\u00a0within the binary star system known as T Coronae Borealis, or T CrB, to happen between now and September. The last time this explosion was observed was in 1946.<\/p>\n

Astronomer Gerard Van Belle, with the\u00a0Lowell Observatory<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Arizona, said the science community is eager for this explosion to happen so they can use modern telescopes to study it. Van Belle said, “You have one star that’s getting old and again, kind of expanding and sloughing off its outer material, and that’s falling on the cinder of an even older star that all this left behind is this, this ember of fire, really this thermonuclear core. As material gets piled on top of it from its companion, it finally explodes.”<\/p>\n