NASA is tracking a 'Zombie star' that could soon appear in the night sky

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) – While Americans are celebrating everything spooky today, NASA is keeping a close eye on a star that could soon rise from the dead!

In 1946, astronomers watched as a new star suddenly appeared in the night sky, only to disappear again a few days later. Earlier this year, NASA noticed some telltale signs that a new “Nova” (which is different from a “Supernova”) of that alien zombie might be imminent.

“When explosions happen in the air, we usually don’t know when they will happen,” says Dr. Elizabeth Hays of NASA. She is a project scientist for the orbiting Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. “We have an idea of this one because we saw the light of it about 80 years ago.”

This Nova is a recurring phenomenon, which means that it occurs regularly. They are called zombie stars because the stars themselves have reached the end of their life cycle, but they feed on a companion star in their binary star system.

‘It’s a white dwarf, so this is a dead star. It no longer burns like our sun,” explained Dr. Hays out. “But it has a companion, and that companion is a red giant star that spews out a lot of gases and material, and the white dwarf eats some of that material. Here’s the exciting thing: we know that if that material falls on that white dwarf star, it will build up on the dead star to the point that it causes an explosion.”

When this happens, the star suddenly appears in a part of the sky that we normally don’t see. It will be in about the same part of the western sky where we saw the comet a few weeks ago, and it will be about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper. But it hasn’t happened yet.

“We thought this could happen as early as April this year. Or it could be a few years in the future. So it’s quite exciting, we can build this expectation,” said Dr. Hays. “We just don’t know how quickly that material will accumulate, and we don’t know exactly when it will reach that magical point that sets it off.”

Basically, the white dwarf’s surface “reactivates” briefly during a Nova, but the fuel burns quickly. NASA will make an announcement when that finally happens so everyone can take a look for themselves. Because it is only 3,000 light-years away, it is the closest Nova that astronomers will have a chance to observe and learn from.

“We would like to understand: how often does that happen? What happens right before? What does that structure look like? We are going to take the best photo ever because it is extremely close,” said Dr. Hays. “We’re going to see things that we haven’t seen before in a Nova that might give us better ways to predict when they’ll happen and why they’ll happen.”

Now a Nova is a completely different process than a Supernova, in which a red supergiant violently implodes at the end of its life cycle. The resulting explosion is enormous and leaves behind beautiful nebulae that we have all seen photos of. Here’s a fun Halloween story: a star called “Betelgeuse” (pronounced Beetlejuice) is our next good chance to see a Supernova, but when will that happen? It could be tomorrow, or thousands of years from now.

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