I’ve been observing the constellation Corona Borealis (CrB) as often as possible since late February at around 5 or 6am. Daylight Saving Time ended here just over a week ago. With CrB gradually becoming observable earlier, if I’m still awake at 1am (fairly often), I can observe it (with binoculars) before I go to bed now.
In an October 2024 article in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society, When will the Next T CrB Eruption Occur? by Jean Schneider, the author writes:
By going more carefully into the dates of occurrence of the past eruptions, one finds that the successive events date separations are an integer multiple of the orbital revolution period.
…
In summary, the eruptions are not strictly periodic, but the eruptions were all separated by an integer multiple of the orbital period 227.5687 days.
From that, I tentatively infer that the eruption date after 1946 February 9 should be 2431861 + N*227.5687 where N is an integer close to 128, if the orbital period remains constant.
The upshot was predictions for the T CrB eruption of March 27 2025, Nov 10 2025 or June 25 2026. The popular press latched onto this article and suggested a greater certainty than was warranted. It’s now a few weeks after the first of these dates and no nova eruption has occurred yet.
We will see about November. In the meantime, we wait.
April 27, 2025 at 1:02 pm |
If the orbital details are known, it may be reasonable to postulate that the next nova may occur at a time near closest separation.
However, making predictions of actual dates for this seems rather brave to me, bearing in mind the scant records relating to previous events.
If the November 2025 date is accurate, it will be a difficult target for most of us, because Corona Borealis will be a daytime constellation around that period.
🙂
April 27, 2025 at 2:22 pm |
Indeed. It will be only a few degrees above the horizon here at 6pm on Nov 10!
April 28, 2025 at 1:27 am |
Em 2024 fiz varias observações da T CrB e esse ano ja comecei a observar. masa realmente, o pior momento para acontecer essa explosão é entre outubro e dezembro, pois a estrela estará muito próxima ao sol e sificil de observar.
O melhor momento será entre maio e setembro