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Tipping Point Quick Hits (06.27.24)

Awaiting a Rare Nova Explosion

Astronomers around the planet are eagerly awaiting an impending explosion within a small constellation in the north sky, a cosmic event NASA is touting as “once in a lifetime” and which hasn’t been seen from Earth since 1946.

A star in the Northern Crown constellation—a horseshoe-shaped curve west of the Hercules constellation—is about to erupt into a nova, a phenomenon that results in the sudden, dramatic increase in a star’s brightness by up to 100,000 times its normal luminosity before fading back to its usual state. (It’s not to be confused with a supernova, a catastrophic explosion that destroys a dying star.)

Known as the T CrB nova, this cosmic event will be visible with the naked eye, and according to NASA, is now showing behavior that “appears strikingly similar to observed behavior in a similar timeframe leading up to the 1946 eruption.”