'Zombie star' may shine on Halloween for the first time in 80 years

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

(WASHINGTON) — A “zombie star” could possibly rise from the dead on Halloween night, according to space experts.

T Coronae Borealis, also known as the “Flaming Star,” is expected to violently erupt in the near future, illuminating a long-dead binary star system for the first time in 80 years, according to NASA.

Blaze Star became a white dwarf, which occurs when stars run out of nuclear fuel.

“This is essentially a dead star,” NASA astrophysicist Padi Boyd told ABC News. “It doesn’t burn anything.”

The dead star has a mass comparable to Earth’s sun, according to NASA. By contrast, Earth’s sun is constantly burning elements such as hydrogen and helium, Boyd said.

Blaze Star is part of the binary system; It has a companion star (a red giant star) from which it “tears up” material, Boyd said. According to NASA, materials such as hydrogen are transferred by a strong gravitational force.

The white dwarf is sucking matter from its companion star “like a vampire,” Boyd said. The material remains on the surface of the white dwarf until enough material builds up to ignite a thermonuclear runaway explosion (pressure and heat buildup). This allows the “dead” star to become “very, very bright,” he added.

Boyd said that every eighty years or so, the Blaze Star system becomes visible to the naked eye when it bursts into bright light.

“It will be as bright as some of the stars we see in constellations at night,” he said.

The first recorded observation of the Blaze Star occurred in the fall of 1217, when a German priest and historian named Burchard of Ursperg observed “a dim star that shone for a time with great light,” according to NASA.

It was last seen from Earth in 1946, according to the space exploration agency.

It’s difficult to predict when a nova, a process in which a star experiences a sudden large increase in brightness, will occur, Boyd said.

“This explosion may happen tonight; “It could happen a year from now, six months from now, or a few weeks from now,” Boyd said. “We know it’s coming soon.”

The Northern Crown is a horseshoe-shaped curve of stars west of the constellation Hercules, according to NASA. In the Northern Hemisphere, it can be identified by finding the two brightest stars, Arcturus and Vega, and tracing a straight line from one to the other, leading stargazers to Hercules and Corona Borealis.

The explosion is expected to be short-lived. A nova, when a star shows a sudden large increase in brightness, will only be visible to the naked eye for less than a week, according to NASA.

Boyd said it will look to astronomy enthusiasts as if a new star has appeared in the sky.

“It will look like the jewel in corona’s crown,” he said.

Scientists hope to study the nova to discover what would happen if material was ejected from the white dwarf and dispersed into neighboring galaxies, Boyd said.

The material includes elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and neon. Boyd added that other stars would collect this material as they formed their own solar systems.

“This is where the materials in our own solar system—our planet, our oceans, our bones, our blood—come from star explosions,” Boyd said.

Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who specializes in nova events, said in a statement earlier this year that the excitement surrounding the event is expected to “stimulate the next generation of scientists.”

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime event that will create many new astronomers that will give young people a cosmic event they can observe for themselves, ask their own questions and collect their own data,” Hounsell said.

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