In 1946, 15-year-old Michael Woodman spotted a rare celestial phenomenon from his bedroom window in Newport. He had never seen anything like it before – a star system called T Corona Borealis, or T Cor Bor for short, that only shines about once every 80 years, and he had witnessed it exploding into brightness. The Astronomer Royal confirmed that Woodman was the first person in the UK to have spotted T Cor Bor. Now, a new generation of stargazers are waiting for the star to ignite again.
Scientists believe T Cor Bor ignites about every 80 years, but there aren’t many records of this. An outburst would allow them to study the star in more detail than ever before. Dr Chris North from Cardiff University says that astronomers around the world are poised to catch the light show, with a few false alarms in the past. He’s hopeful that it could appear soon and says: “It seems that in the past, this has dimmed a little bit before it’s actually erupted, and there are signs that maybe, at the moment, it’s just dipping a little bit in brightness. So maybe that’s a hint that it’s getting close to its eruption.”
On a crystal clear night, in the Dark Skies Reserve of Bannau Brycheiniog, also known as the Brecon Beacons, astronomers are setting up their telescopes to try to capture the short-lived phenomenon. Dr Jenifer Millard from Fifth Star Labs advises that T Cor Bor is dim at the minute, at magnitude 10, which is below what you can see with the naked eye. She advises first to locate the plough and follow its handle to Arcturus. To the west of this star is the curved constellation of Corona Borealis, made up of seven stars, and where T Cor Bor will at some point light up.
T Cor Bor’s brightness is caused by the interaction between two stars orbiting each other. A small white dwarf, which is a dead star, is locked in a cosmic dance with a much larger red giant – a star that’s reaching the end of its life. The compact white dwarf has an immense gravitational pull so great that it steals material away from its larger neighbour. Over time, the material it grabs from the other star gets crushed and compressed – until eventually, it triggers a nuclear explosion, releasing a huge amount of energy – a process known as going nova.
Michael Woodman, now 94 years old, certainly wants to see T Cor Bor again and says: “Somebody will get me into a car and drive me out into the wild somewhere so I can have a decent look. That’s what we are hoping for.” If he catches another glimpse of the light show, he believes it will put him in a very exclusive club – of just one. “Eighty years on, we’re all looking at the skies again, not only me, but the whole world apparently,” he says. “If I’m alive, if I see it, I will be the only one who’s seen it twice.
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