(NEXSTAR) — Earlier this year, NASA reported a star system was expected to erupt and bring a “new star” to the night sky.
At the time, astronomers believed the “new star,” dubbed the Blaze Star, would appear between February and September this year. But, with just a few days left in September, stargazers still have yet to observe this once-in-a-lifetime visitor.
So where is it?
The Blaze Star is part of the Northern Crown, a star system roughly 3,000 light-years away from Earth. Nestled within the star system is the nova T Coronae Borealis, otherwise known as T CrB, which is one of 10 recurrent novae that humans have gotten to see explode multiple times, Dr. David Wilson, an astrophysicist and research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Nexstar.
This nova is born from a red giant star and a white dwarf, the latter of which is about the size of the Earth, according to Bill Cooke, NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office Lead at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
“The larger star is dumping material onto the surface of its white dwarf companion; as material accumulates, the temperature keeps rising until a thermonuclear runaway is initiated,” he told Nexstar earlier this year.
When T CrB “goes nova,” it appears to us on Earth as if a new star (nova comes from the Latin word for “new star”) has joined the constellation of Corona Borealis, or “The Northern Crown.”
If you check that constellation now, however, you won’t see T CrB.
Astronomers know that when T CrB last exploded in 1946, the star got dimmer about a year prior, then rapidly got brighter. T CrB started dimming in March 2023, prompting many to forecast that we would see the Blaze Star between February and September of this year.
However, as both Cooke and Wilson noted, the window in which T CrB could appear is wider — by months, even. If it doesn’t explode soon, we may even miss it.
“Hopefully it will explode this month. If it doesn’t, it’ll actually be very inconvenient because it’s about to go behind the sun,” Wilson told Nexstar, explaining that we wouldn’t be able to see the explosion then. It won’t be back in our night sky until early next year.
Should T CrB reach nova status before it goes behind the sun, or once the Northern Crown returns to our night sky, we’ll only get to see the new star for a few days.
According to Wilson, it will take the star about a night to go from “its current brightness to its peak brightness.” Then it will dim and disappear — a process that could last a few days to a week.
Even though it’s an experience 80 years in the making, Wilson warned it may be best to “dampen expectations.”
“It’s not going to get that bright,” he explained, comparing it to the North Star. It will, however, be bright enough that many of our space telescopes will not be able to see it for the first few days, Wilson said. “For the first few days, it will mainly be the smaller, amateur telescopes that will be doing most of the work.”
To find T CrB, you’ll want to look between the constellations of Hercules and Boötes, located toward the north. It will appear in the Corona Borealis, or the Northern Crown, found in line with Vega and Arcturus, according to the guide below from NASA.
For now, Wilson said T CrB is being “constantly tracked” by amateur astronomers around the world. NASA also has ground-based telescopes keeping an eye on it.
If and when we are able to see the Blaze Star, just remember: the explosion we’re seeing happened about 3,000 years ago.
