Star Explosion Predicted in 2022!

Luminous Red Nova:  a stellar explosion thought to be caused by the merging of two stars. They are characterized by a distinct red color, and a light curve that lingers with resurgent brightness in the infrared. Luminous red novae are not to be confused with standard novae, explosions that occur on the surface of white dwarf stars.

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This is Larry Molnar and team’s model of the double star system KIC 9832227. The 2 stars are so close, they’re touching. They are an eclipsing binary as seen from Earth, meaning we see one star pass in front of the other with each spin of the system. Image via Calvin.edu.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to see a nova occur in our lifetime.  They occur fairly often in galaxies throughout the universe, but for stars in our galaxy, the chances are much smaller.  The last one was in 1987, which actually occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a sister galaxy of our own Milky Way. 

Novae that occur close (within the galaxy) would appear very bright;  and supernovae would shine bright enough to be visible in broad daylight and would appear much brighter than the moon at night.  Luminous Red Novae would be dimmer but would still create a easy to see 'new star' in the night sky, outshining many of our existing constellation stars.

Well maybe we will get to see such an explosion.  Astronomer Larry Molnar and his colleagues and students have made an unprecedented prediction of a star explosion – due in the year 2022, or thereabouts, they say – that’ll become visible from Earth, even to those without telescopes. The star system is an eclipsing binary system (one star passes in front of the other as seen from Earth) called known as KIC 9832227. New evidence suggests that these two very close stars are getting closer and will merge explosively, soon. Molnar is presenting his findings today (January 6, 2017) at the 229th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Texas. 

The full story can be read at EarthSky.org