The world will see this once in a lifetime

Someday between now and next September, a huge explosion is going to happen in the night sky. It will give amateur astronomers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness such strange phenomena in space. This star explosion will happen three thousand light years away from Earth.

The constellation Corona Borealis in space, or the Northern Crown binary star system, is usually very faint to the naked eye.

But every 80 years or so there is a displacement between the two stars in this constellation. At that time they got involved in a big conflict. A special kind of nuclear explosion takes place.

The American space research agency NASA says that the light emitted by the explosion will be visible as a new star. And it is as bright as the fixed star. It seems that these stars suddenly appeared in our night sky for a few days.

Mankind will witness such events at least three times. The first such phenomenon was discovered in 1866 by Irish polymath John Birmingham. Then the same incident happened again in 1946.

Astronomer Sumer Starfield of Arizona State University gave the event its name. Starfield told the news agency AFP that he was very excited to see this 'explosion' of Nova.

Since the 1960s, the astronomer has worked sporadically on the constellation T Corona Borealis, known as the Blaze Star. Starfield is finishing up a research paper that speculates on what information astronomers will find out from the two star explosions, which are expected to occur within the next five months.

Starfield jokingly said, "I could do it today... but it doesn't seem to be happening."

"There are only about 10 "recurring novae" in our known galaxy, the Milky Way and nearby galaxies," Starfield said. Typical nova explosions occur every one hundred thousand years. However, due to the strange relationship between the two stars, recurrent nova explosions can happen more than once in a person's lifetime.