Stay tuned! You’ll soon be able to see a star system that exploded 3,000 years ago

If a total solar eclipse or a flyby of the ‘devil comet’ isn’t enough to whet your interest in the cosmos, NASA has one more option up its sleeve.

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An explosion of a distant star system will light up the night sky so much you will be able to see it clearly, according to an announcement from NASA.

T Coronae Borealis’ “nova outburst” is a celestial event that occurs once every 80 years, according to the space agency. And it puts on a show.

William J. Cooke, lead of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, told CNN that most novae happen unexpectedly, without warning. Novae are extremely bright white dwarf stars.

“However, T Coronae Borealis is one of 10 recurring novae in the galaxy. We know from the last eruption back in 1946 that the star will get dimmer for just over a year before rapidly increasing in brightness,” Cooke said.

That happened last year, according to Cooke. Astronomers believe the explosion will happen between February and September of this year.

According to NASA, this “nova outburst” appears as bright as Polaris, also known as the North Star, and will be able to be seen with the naked eye.

They type of explosion that happens with T Coronae Borealis happens when a tiny white dwarf, the core of a dead star, becomes locked in the orbit of a giant red star.

As the red giant star interacts and tears apart nearby stars, the white drawf absorbs the debris of the stars and gradually becomes hotter until it releases the energy in a cosmic explosion — a nova.

Despite the fact the explosion happened thousands of years ago, its exact arrival is hard to predict. T Coronae Borealis is located 3,000 light-years away from Earth.

“But the uncertainty as to when this will happen is several months – can’t do better than that with what we know now,” Cooke said.

To see the explosion, NASA suggests you become familiar with the constellation Corona Borealis, or the Northern Crown — a small, semicircular arc of stars near Bootes and Hercules. This is where the outburst will appear as a “new” bright star. You can see a map of the area here.

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