If you can see the Big Dipper, you’ll get to see a star go nova soon

Sometime between May and September, a white dwarf is expected to go thermonuclear.

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[Veritas super omens]

"Tiberius".

Tiberius was a pedophile and world class jerk.

 

[Deleted member 852752]

A small star map would have been a great addition to the article.

I used the SkyView app to find the constellation. It's a great little app. For anyone doing a search, it's listed under "Corona Borealis".

 

[Albino_Boo]

Tiberius was a pedophile and world class jerk.

What do you think the T stands for in James T Kirk.

 

[bebu]

Tiberius was a pedophile and world class jerk.

What do you think the T stands for in James T Kirk.

Its surreal - from an imperial reputed paedophile on Capri two millennia ago to a 23rd century starship commander in a piece about a nova.
Kirk might well have visited this white dwarf but at over 2000 light years probably outside the range of the Enterprise.
Might as well throw T. Gracchus into the fray, not that there are any extant reports of his having any interest in astronomy or juveniles.

 

[Albino_Boo]

Its surreal - from an imperial reputed paedophile on Capri two millennia ago to a 23rd century starship commander in a piece about a nova.
Kirk might well have visited this white dwarf but at over 2000 light years probably outside the range of the Enterprise.
Might as well throw T. Gracchus into the fray, not that there are any extant reports of his having any interest in astronomy or juveniles.

T. Gracchus was a pleb

 

[Andrew Wade]

There are interesting questions about whether novae phases of a white dwarf life is needed as a step towards a 1a supernovae. To make a 1a supernovae you need to push a white dwarf above 1.4 times the mass of the Sun. You could do that either by acceating material from a companion, like this system, but then you have novae explosions, like this system, blowing most/all that accreted material off the white dwarf so it might grow in mass very slowly. The other way is to start with two white dwarfs and smash them together, but then you have issues with how many double white dwarf systems we expect to merge. There's a enough diversity in 1a explosions that's it's probable we need abit of both types, plus maybe other more unusual mechanisms for certain sub types of 1a supernovae.

Ohh interesting. My first thought is that this would be an issue for using Ia SNe as standard candles since there is no reason that two merging white dwarfs would have a combined mass right at the 1.44 solar mass threshold. But to my eye (and I am not an astrophysicist) there does appear to be a fair bit of scatter in the magnitude-redshift plots so maybe SNe Ia are not particularly good standard candles.

 

[Br.Bill]

Meh. I'm going to hold out for Betelgeuse. I brought lunch, so I can wait.

Just say it two more times and you can get it to appear before you start on dessert.

 

[Faceless Man]

Just say it two more times and you can get it to appear before you start on dessert.

Not if you pronounce it correctly.

 

[Bruzote]

This is an interesting factoid. Thanks for sharing!

Does anyone know if there is a service similar to SpotTheStation that would send a text or email when professionals/scientists notice when the event happens so I can know to go out and look? I guess, at the very least, Ars will post a new article?

I can find only one potential service (nova alert in particular is not mentioned, but I assume would be included). However, my first attempt at clicking the search results link ended in a warning about an invalid SLL certificate. So, I don't know how well it can be trusted, particularly since they are asking for monthly payment ofs $5.99/month plus additional $4/month if your phone number is outside the US. If they can't even manage to present a good certificate, I sure won't trust them with my credit card information.

It would be nice to get an alert. From what I read either here or in another (Ars?) article, the brightening time is only half a day! In other words, you might notice it getting brighter within a few hours of observing.

 

[bongbong]

So much free advertising for apple.... Like only apple uses lithium huh?

 

[Keysh]

Ohh interesting. My first thought is that this would be an issue for using Ia SNe as standard candles since there is no reason that two merging white dwarfs would have a combined mass right at the 1.44 solar mass threshold. But to my eye (and I am not an astrophysicist) there does appear to be a fair bit of scatter in the magnitude-redshift plots so maybe SNe Ia are not particularly good standard candles.

I think the merger hypothesis involves two white dwarfs with a combined mass greater than the Chandrasekhar limit, and the explosion happens partway through the “merger” process, not after the merger is finished. Imagine that the two stars are so close that tidal distortions become strong enough for material from the less massive star to begin accreting onto the more massive star. At a certain point, this puts the more massive star over the limit, and it goes (Type Ia) supernova. (It’s not clear what happens to what’s left of the second, lower-mass star; it may stick around as an even-lower-mass white dwarf.)

 

[ZenBeam]

I can find only one potential service (nova alert in particular is not mentioned, but I assume would be included). However, my first attempt at clicking the search results link ended in a warning about an invalid SLL certificate. So, I don't know how well it can be trusted, particularly since they are asking for monthly payment ofs $5.99/month plus additional $4/month if your phone number is outside the US. If they can't even manage to present a good certificate, I sure won't trust them with my credit card information.

It would be nice to get an alert. From what I read either here or in another (Ars?) article, the brightening time is only half a day! In other words, you might notice it getting brighter within a few hours of observing.

I have Astro-COLIBRI app on Android (I think there's an iOS version also). I get supernova, optical transient, and gravitational wave alerts. There's some ability to limit notifications to the more meaningful alerts, so you're not constantly getting spammed. It's free for me, but I'm in the US.