“Astronomically speaking, it’s very close by,” NASA Astrophysicist Charity Woodrum told 13 ON YOUR SIDE.
MICHIGAN, USA — A once-in-a-lifetime explosion is expected to burst in the night sky and NASA scientists said it’s right in our backyard.
The stellar spectacle involves a star system that resides relatively close to Earth, which presents an opportunity for scientists to study this rare event with a closer eye.
“Astronomically speaking, it’s very close by,” NASA Astrophysicist Charity Woodrum told 13 ON YOUR SIDE. “It’s only 3,000 light years away so we’ll be able to study it in unprecedented detail with our telescopes and be able to answer some of the open questions we have about how stars are born, how they live their lives and how they eventually die.”
The system, T Coronae Borealis, is known as a recurrent nova consisting of two stars including a white dwarf, known as the zombie star, and a red giant.
According to Woodrum, the phenomenon people get the chance to see this Halloween is a rare event in which the red giant adds its last bit of material onto the surface of the white dwarf, resulting in a thermonuclear explosion.
Researchers found the explosion only happens every 80 years once the white dwarf decides it has accumulated enough layers from its companion star.
Woodrum said the best way for trick-or-treaters to spot the historical event is simply to keep their eyes on the sky.
“People have been doing that a lot recently with the comet Aurora Borealis and even the eclipse earlier this year,” Woodrum said. “So go out and look up at the night sky, in particular look towards the west towards the constellation the Coronae Borealis.”
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