A ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ cosmic explosion is likely this summer, NASA says. Here’s what you need to know.

A rare burst of light from a dead star will likely be visible to humans Soil this summer in a fleeting but potentially grim celestial display that scientists are calling “a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

The technical term for the impending cosmic explosion is nova, which happens when a white dwarf suddenly and often strikingly lights up in the night sky. ‘White dwarf’ is how astronomers describe a star at the end of its life cycle, after it has used up all its nuclear fuel and only its core remains. Unlike a supernova – another solar phenomenon visible from Earth when a star effectively explodes – a nova instead refers to a dramatic ejection of material that a white dwarf has collected over time from a younger star in its immediate vicinity.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event that will create many new astronomers, giving young people a cosmic event that they can observe for themselves, ask their own questions and collect their own data,” says Rebekah Hounsell. an assistant research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who specializes in nova events, said in a statement. “It will fuel the next generation of scientists.”

Between now and September, scientists expect a nova to occur in the Corona Borealis, or Northern Crown, of the Milky Way will send a flash so powerful inside room NASA recently announced that the naked eye can witness it. It will materialize in a dark spot in the constellation, where violent interactions between a white dwarf and a red giant will culminate in this massive explosion.

A red giant is a dying star in the final stages of its life cycle, becoming increasingly turbulent as it expands and periodically expelling material from its outer layers in intense episodes.

Together known as T Coronae Borealis, also called the ‘Blaze Star’, the white dwarf and red giant, which are expected to create a nova this summer, form a binary star system in the Northern Crown, located about 3,000 light-years from Earth . The red giant in this pair is continually being stripped of hydrogen as it continues its path toward total collapse, while the nearby white dwarf pulls that material into its own orbit, NASA said. The hydrogen siphoned from the red giant accumulates on the white dwarf’s surface for decades, until the heat and pressure build up to the point of a full-blown thermonuclear explosion.

The explosion, which resembles an atomic bomb in appearance, redeems the dead star of that excess material. The burst will likely be visible on Earth for about a week before dissipating, but both the white dwarf and red giant in the Blaze Star system will still be intact when it fades. At that point, the process of hydrogen building between the two stars begins again, and it will continue until the accumulation of material on the white dwarf reaches its threshold the next time and explodes abruptly.

Different binary systems such as T Coronae Borealis go through this cycle at different rates. Normally, a nova erupts from the Blaze Star about every 80 years.

“There are a few recurring novae with very short cycles, but typically we don’t see a repeat eruption very often in a lifetime, and rarely one that is so relatively close to our own system,” Hounsell said. “It’s incredibly exciting to have this front row seat.”

When the nova in T Coronae Borealis eventually occurs, it will be the first of the pair observed from Earth since 1946, according to NASA. The agency advised hopeful stargazers to look for the Northern Crown on clear nights, describing it as “a horseshoe-shaped curve of stars west of the constellation Hercules.” NASA also encouraged citizens to observe the phenomenon as best they can, even though their own scientists will study the nova at its peak and during its decline.

“But it is equally important to obtain data during the early rise to the eruption,” Hounsell said, “so that the data collected by those enthusiastic citizen scientists now searching for the nova will dramatically contribute to our findings.”