Scientists Await Star's Explosion Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading an article in one of my latest newspapers titled... "Scientists Await Star's Explosion."  The sub-head on the story was titled... "Amateurs keep watch for titanic blast far in space that could happen any day."  The story was written by Los Angeles Times reporter Noah Haggerty.  It read...Every clear night for the last three weeks, Bob Stephens has pointed his home telescope at the same two stars in hopes of witnessing one of the most violent events in the universe - a nova explosion a hundred thousand times brighter than the sun.  The eruption, which scientists say could happen any day now, has excited the interest of major observatories worldwide, and it promises to advance our understanding of turbulent binary star systems.  Yet for all the high-tech observational power that NASA and other scientific institutions can muster, astrophysicists are relying on countless amateur astronomers like Stephens to spot the eplosion first.  The reason?  It's just too costly to keep their equipment focused on the same subject for months at a time.  "I think everyone will look at it while it happens, but sitting there just looking at it isn't going to make it happen," said Tom Meneghini, the director of telescope operations and executive director emeritus at the Mount Wilson Observatory.  "It's like a watched pot," he joked.  The star is so far away that it takes 3,000 years for its light to reach the Earth, meaning the explosion occurred before the last of the Egyptian pyramids were built.  It will appear about as bright as the North Star for just a few days before fading into the darkness.  Once it's spotted, some of the most advanced observatories on Earth and in space will join in watching, including NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.  T Coronae Borealis, also called the Blaze Star, is actually two stars - a hot, dense white dwarf, and a cooler red giant.  The dwarf star, which ran out of fuel long ago and collapsed to roughly the size of Earth, has been siphoning hydrogen gas from its larger neighbor for about a human lifetime.  This stolen gas has accumulated in a disk around the dwarf like a hot, messy version of Saturn's rings.  Soon, the disk will grow so heavy that it will become violent and unwieldy, and inevitably, explode like a thermonuclear bomb.  Neither star is destroyed however, and the process repeats itself roughly every 80 years.  This time around, there's an army of enthusiasts like Stephens ready to sound the alarm when the star goes nova.  Far from mere hobbyists, a number of these amateur observers have published their own scientific research.  Stephens even built his own observatory as an addition to his house in Rancho Cucamonga.  "The city thinks it's a sunroom," Stephens said.  After the inspector stopped by, he removed the screws securing the roof, allowing him to roll it off to reveal the clear sky to his telescope.  Every night, he turns on the telescope and spends more than an hour taking data, which he later posts to an online community of amateur astronomers who monitor the star almost nonstop.  Estimates on when the nova will occur vary, but most astro-physicists agree it will happen before the end of the year, and likely by the end of August. I can hardly wait to see the explosion!!  I'll try and not miss this big event!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.