July 2025: Stellar Fireworks, The Blaze Star

The World Awaits

All eyes are on the sky for a firework of truly epic proportions! In a show of stellar independence, there are certain types of stars that detonate regularly. Astronomers call these events recurrent novae and there is one due to explode any day now! In the constellation of Coronae Borealis (the Northern Crown) lives a star colloquially known as ‘The Blaze Star’. It is estimated that this star detonates approximately every 80 years, and it is now due to explore any day now!

Why does it explode?

The Blaze Star is part of a binary system, a system composed of two stars, where one star "feeds” off the remnants of the other star. This transfer of hydrogen onto The Blaze Star builds up a shell of hydrogen fuel on the surface. As this shell of fuel grows it reaches a crucial tipping point. When this happens, the entire shell on the surface ignites in a rapid chain reaction of fusion. This increases the brightness of the star an estimated 100,000 times! This increase will cause The Blaze star to go from completely invisible to the naked eye, to approximately the brightness of the North Star, Polaris.