Astronomy

In what is being called a “once-in-a-lifetime event”, light from a thermonuclear explosion on a star has been travelling towards Earth for thousands of years and it will be here any day.T Coronae Borealis (also known as T Cor Bor, T CrB, and the Blaze star) will be as bright as the north star (for those in the northern hemisphere).Dr Laura Driessen, from the University of Sydney’s school of physics, said the Blaze star would be as bright as Orion’s right foot for those in the southern hemisphere.A recurrent nova, T CrB becomes visible about every 80 years after a thermonuclear explosion on the surface of a white dwarf about 3,000 light years away.The dwarf sucks up hydrogen from a neighbouring red giant, and that causes a buildup of pressure and heat that eventually triggers the explosion....

The mysterious brightening of a galaxy far, far away has been traced to the heart of the star system and the sudden awakening of a giant black hole 1m times more massive than the sun.Decades of observations found nothing remarkable about the distant galaxy in the constellation of Virgo, but that changed at the end of 2019 when astronomers noticed a dramatic surge in its luminosity that persists to this day.Researchers now believe they are witnessing changes that have never been seen before, with the black hole at the galaxy’s core putting on an extreme cosmic light show as vast amounts of material fall into it.“We discovered this source at the moment it started to show these variations in luminosity,” said Dr Paula Sánchez-Sáez, a staff astronomer at the European Southern Observatory hea...