Astronomers await dazzling celestial show

One cold February night in 1946, a 15-year-old schoolboy discovered something strange when he peered out of his bedroom window.

Michael Woodman, an astronomer from Newport, was up late waiting for his father to come home when he noticed something strange in the night sky.

“There was a cluster of Corona Borealis, but in the Corona ring, the second star below was bright – very bright,” he explains.

“And I thought ‘I’ve never seen anything like that.’

The next morning he wrote a letter to the Astronomer King. The 94-year-old now smiles as he reminisces, wondering if his youth could have been so brave.

“And bless me if the Astronomer Royal didn’t answer, it’s a letter I still have.”

Michael Woodman saw a strange celestial event that briefly lit up the sky. Not only that, the King of Astronomy informed him that he was the first person in the world to see this.

He saw a star, about 3,000 light years away, called T Corona Borealis – or T Cor Bor for short – bursting with light, visible in the night sky for a few days.

“I hit the jackpot,” he says.

Now a new generation of stargazers is looking at the sky again because scientists believe that T Cor Bor flares up about every 80 years.

On a clear night, at the Dark Skies Reserve in Bannau Brycheiniog, also known as the Brecon Beacons, astronomers are setting up their telescopes.

“T Cor Bor is minute – it’s 10 magnitudes, below what you can see with the naked eye,” explains Dr Jenifer Millard of Fifth Star Labs.

To find the place in the sky where it should appear, he advises to find the plow and follow its handle to Arcturus. To the west of this star is the curved constellation Corona Borealis, made up of seven stars, and where T Cor Bor will shine next time.

“It will only be visible for a few days,” he says.

“Of course, if you have a small telescope or a small telescope, you can see it for a long time because you have a bigger instrument. It is fixed in the sky that makes it very special.”

An astronomical phenomenon is caused by the interaction between two stars orbiting each other.

A small white star, which is a dead star, is locked in a cosmic dance with a red giant – a star that is reaching the end of its life.

A white dwarf system has such a strong gravitational pull, that it steals matter away from its larger companion.

Dr Jane Clark of the Cardiff Astronomical Society explains: “The gravity of the surface of a white star is a million times the gravity we feel on Earth, so if we were to stand there, we would be crushed in an instant.

Over time, the material from the other star is broken up and broken up – until it finally causes a nuclear explosion, releasing a lot of energy – a process called going nova.

“And when it does, it will light up like the best Christmas tree in town,” says Dr Clark.

Astronomers think this is a recurring event, with T Cor Bor eruptions occurring about every 80 years.

But there are not many records about this. And there have already been a few alarms that T Cor Bor was about to appear – followed by a disappointing performance.

But Dr Chris North from Cardiff University says astronomers around the world are ready to capture the light show, which will help them study the star in more detail than ever before.

And they hope it will be seen soon.

“It seems that in the past, this started to decline a little bit before it exploded, and there are signs that maybe right now, it’s just dipping a little bit in the light,” he says.

“So maybe that’s a sign that it’s getting close to bursting.”

Michael Woodman really wants to see T Cor Bor again.

“Someone will put me in a car and drive me to the bush somewhere to look good. That’s what we’re waiting for,” he says.

And if he sees another light show, he believes it will put him in a select club – the only one.

“Eighty years go by, we’re all looking at the sky again, not just me, but the whole world,” he says.

“If I live, if I see it, I will be the only one who has seen it twice.”

Then with a big smile and a little laugh, he adds: “You need to rest!