A nova (plural novae or novas) is a
transient astronomical event
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...
that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramatic appearance of a nova vary, depending on the circumstances of the two progenitor stars. All observed novae involve
white dwarf
A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes ...
s in close
binary systems. The main sub-classes of novae are classical novae, recurrent novae (RNe), and
dwarf novae. They are all considered to be
cataclysmic variable stars.
Classical nova eruptions are the most common type. They are likely created in a close binary star system consisting of a white dwarf and either a
main sequence
In astronomy, the main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appears on plots of stellar color versus brightness. These color-magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar Her ...
,
subgiant, or
red giant star. When the orbital period falls in the range of several days to one day, the white dwarf is close enough to its companion star to start drawing
accreted matter onto the surface of the white dwarf, which creates a dense but shallow atmosphere. This atmosphere, mostly consisting of hydrogen, is thermally heated by the hot white dwarf and eventually reaches a critical temperature causing ignition of rapid
runaway
Runaway, Runaways or Run Away may refer to:
Engineering
* Runaway reaction, a chemical reaction releasing more heat than what can be removed and becoming uncontrollable
* Thermal runaway, self-increase of the reaction rate of an exothermic proce ...
fusion.
The sudden increase in energy expels the atmosphere into interstellar space creating the envelope seen as visible light during the nova event. Such were taken in past centuries to be a new star. A few novae produce short-lived
nova remnants, lasting for perhaps several centuries. Recurrent nova processes are the same as the classical nova, except that the fusion ignition may be repetitive because the companion star can again feed the dense atmosphere of the white dwarf.
Novae most often occur in the sky along the path of the
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked ey ...
, especially near the observed
Galactic Center
The Galactic Center or Galactic Centre is the rotational center, the barycenter, of the Milky Way galaxy. Its central massive object is a supermassive black hole of about 4 million solar masses, which is called Sagittarius A*, a compact ...
in Sagittarius; however, they can appear anywhere in the sky. They occur far more
frequently
In grammar, a frequentative form (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated or ) of a word is one that indicates repeated action, but is not to be confused with iterative aspect. The frequentative form can be considered a separate but not comp ...
than galactic
supernovae, averaging about ten per year. Most are found telescopically, perhaps only one every 12–18 months reaching
naked-eye visibility. Novae reaching first or second
magnitude occur only several times per century. The last bright nova was
V1369 Centauri reaching 3.3 magnitude on 14 December 2013.
Etymology
During the sixteenth century, astronomer
Tycho Brahe
Tycho Brahe ( ; born Tyge Ottesen Brahe; generally called Tycho (14 December 154624 October 1601) was a Danish astronomer, known for his comprehensive astronomical observations, generally considered to be the most accurate of his time. He was ...
observed the
supernova SN 1572 in the constellation
Cassiopeia. He described it in his book ''De nova stella'' (
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...
for "concerning the new star"), giving rise to the adoption of the name ''nova''. In this work he argued that a nearby object should be seen to move relative to the fixed stars, and that the nova had to be very far away. Although this event was a supernova and not a nova, the terms were considered interchangeable until the 1930s.
After this, novae were classified as ''classical novae'' to distinguish them from supernovae, as their causes and energies were thought to be different, based solely in the observational evidence.
Although the term "stella nova" means "new star", novae most often take place as a result of
white dwarf
A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes ...
s, which are remnants of extremely old stars.
Stellar evolution of novae
Evolution of potential novae begins with two main sequence stars in a binary system. One of the two evolves into a
red giant, leaving its remnant white dwarf core in orbit with the remaining star. The second star—which may be either a main sequence star or an aging giant—begins to shed its envelope onto its white dwarf companion when it overflows its
Roche lobe. As a result, the white dwarf steadily captures matter from the companion's outer atmosphere in an accretion disk, and in turn, the accreted matter falls into the atmosphere. As the white dwarf consists of
degenerate matter, the accreted hydrogen does not inflate, but its temperature increases. Runaway fusion occurs when the temperature of this atmospheric layer reaches ~20 million
K, initiating nuclear burning, via the
CNO cycle.
Hydrogen fusion may occur in a stable manner on the surface of the white dwarf for a narrow range of accretion rates, giving rise to a
super soft X-ray source, but for most binary system parameters, the hydrogen burning is unstable thermally and rapidly converts a large amount of the hydrogen into other, heavier
chemical element
A chemical element is a species of atoms that have a given number of protons in their nuclei, including the pure substance consisting only of that species. Unlike chemical compounds, chemical elements cannot be broken down into simpler sub ...
s in a
runaway
Runaway, Runaways or Run Away may refer to:
Engineering
* Runaway reaction, a chemical reaction releasing more heat than what can be removed and becoming uncontrollable
* Thermal runaway, self-increase of the reaction rate of an exothermic proce ...
reaction,
liberating an enormous amount of energy. This blows the remaining gases away from the surface of the white dwarf surface and produces an extremely bright outburst of light.
The rise to peak brightness may be very rapid, or gradual. This is related to the speed class of the nova; yet after the peak, the brightness declines steadily. The time taken for a nova to decay by around 2 or 3 magnitudes from maximum optical brightness is used for classification, via its speed class. Fast novae typically will take fewer than 25 days to decay by 2 magnitudes, while slow novae will take more than 80 days.
Despite their violence, usually the amount of material ejected in novae is only about of a
solar mass
The solar mass () is a standard unit of mass in astronomy, equal to approximately . It is often used to indicate the masses of other stars, as well as stellar clusters, nebulae, galaxies and black holes. It is approximately equal to the mass o ...
, quite small relative to the mass of the white dwarf. Furthermore, only five percent of the accreted mass is fused during the power outburst.
Nonetheless, this is enough energy to accelerate nova ejecta to velocities as high as several thousand kilometers per second—higher for fast novae than slow ones—with a concurrent rise in
luminosity
Luminosity is an absolute measure of radiated electromagnetic power (light), the radiant power emitted by a light-emitting object over time. In astronomy, luminosity is the total amount of electromagnetic energy emitted per unit of time by a s ...
from a few times solar to 50,000–100,000 times solar.
In 2010 scientists using NASA's
Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope discovered that a nova also can emit gamma-rays (>100 MeV).
Potentially, a white dwarf can generate multiple novae over time as additional hydrogen continues to accrete onto its surface from its companion star. An example is
RS Ophiuchi, which is known to have flared seven times (in 1898, 1933, 1958, 1967, 1985, 2006, and 2021). Eventually, the white dwarf could explode as a Type
Ia supernova if it approaches the
Chandrasekhar limit.
Occasionally, novae are bright enough and close enough to Earth to be conspicuous to the unaided eye. The brightest recent example was
Nova Cygni 1975. This nova appeared on 29 August 1975, in the constellation
Cygnus about five degrees north of
Deneb, and reached
magnitude 2.0 (nearly as bright as
Deneb). The most recent were
V1280 Scorpii
V1280 Scorpii (or Nova Scorpii 2007 Number 1) is the first of two novae that occurred in the constellation Scorpius during February 2007 (the second nova was the fainter V1281 Scorpii, which was discovered on 19 February 2007). Announced by ...
, which reached magnitude 3.7 on 17 February 2007, and
Nova Delphini 2013.
Nova Centauri 2013 was discovered 2 December 2013 and so far, is the brightest nova of this millennium, reaching magnitude 3.3.
Helium novae
A helium nova (undergoing a
helium flash) is a proposed category of nova events that lacks hydrogen lines in its spectrum. This may be caused by the explosion of a helium shell on a white dwarf. The theory was first proposed in 1989, and the first candidate helium nova to be observed was
V445 Puppis in 2000. Since then, four other novae have been proposed as helium novae.
Occurrence rate and astrophysical significance
Astronomers estimate that the
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked ey ...
experiences roughly 30 to 60 novae per year, but a recent examination has found the likely improved rate of about 50±27.
The number of novae discovered in the
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked ey ...
each year is much lower, about 10,
[
] probably due to distant novae being obscured by gas and dust absorption.
Roughly 25 novae brighter than about the twentieth magnitude are discovered in the
Andromeda Galaxy
The Andromeda Galaxy (IPA: ), also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224 and originally the Andromeda Nebula, is a barred spiral galaxy with the diameter of about approximately from Earth and the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way. The gal ...
each year and smaller numbers are seen in other nearby galaxies.
[
] As of 2019, 407 probable novae are recorded in the Milky Way.
[
]Spectroscopic
Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter ...
observation of nova ejecta nebulae has shown that they are enriched in elements such as helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, neon, and magnesium. The contribution of novae to the interstellar medium
In astronomy, the interstellar medium is the matter and radiation that exist in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, as well as dust and cosmic rays. It fills interstella ...
is not great; novae supply only as much material to the Galaxy as do supernovae, and only as much as red giant and supergiant
Supergiants are among the most massive and most luminous stars. Supergiant stars occupy the top region of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram with absolute visual magnitudes between about −3 and −8. The temperature range of supergiant stars s ...
stars.
Recurrent novae such as RS Ophiuchi (those with periods on the order of decades) are rare. Astronomers theorize, however, that most, if not all, novae are recurrent, albeit on time scales ranging from 1,000 to 100,000 years. The recurrence interval for a nova is less dependent on the accretion rate of the white dwarf than on its mass; with their powerful gravity, massive white dwarfs require less accretion to fuel an eruption than lower-mass ones. Consequently, the interval is shorter for high-mass white dwarfs.
V Sagittae is unusual in that we can predict now that it will go nova in approximately 2083, plus or minus about 11 years.
On 27 May 2020, astronomers reported that classical novae explosions are galactic producers of the element lithium
Lithium (from el, λίθος, lithos, lit=stone) is a chemical element with the symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense solid ...
.
Subtypes
Novae are classified according to the light curve development speed, so in
* NA: fast novae, with a rapid brightness increase, followed by a brightness decline of 3 magnitudes — to about brightness — within 100 days.[
]
* NB: slow novae, with magnitudes of 3, decline in 150 days or more.
* NC: very slow novae, also known as symbiotic nova Symbiotic novae are slow irregular eruptive variable stars with very slow nova-like outbursts with an amplitude of between 9 and 11 magnitudes. The symbiotic nova remains at maximum for one or a few decades, and then declines towards its original ...
e, staying at maximum light for a decade or more and then fading very slowly.
* NR/RN: recurrent novae, novae with two or more eruptions separated by 10–80 years have been observed.
Remnants
Some novae leave behind visible nebulosity, material expelled in the nova explosion or in multiple explosions.
Novae as distance indicators
Novae have some promise for use as standard candle measurements of distances. For instance, the distribution of their absolute magnitude
Absolute magnitude () is a measure of the luminosity of a celestial object on an inverse logarithmic astronomical magnitude scale. An object's absolute magnitude is defined to be equal to the apparent magnitude that the object would have if it we ...
is bimodal
In statistics, a multimodal distribution is a probability distribution with more than one mode. These appear as distinct peaks (local maxima) in the probability density function, as shown in Figures 1 and 2. Categorical, continuous, and dis ...
, with a main peak at magnitude −8.8, and a lesser one at −7.5. Novae also have roughly the same absolute magnitude 15 days after their peak (−5.5). Comparisons of nova-based distance estimates to various nearby galaxies and galaxy cluster
A galaxy cluster, or a cluster of galaxies, is a structure that consists of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound together by gravity, with typical masses ranging from 1014 to 1015 solar masses. They are the second-la ...
s with those measured with Cepheid
A Cepheid variable () is a type of star that pulsates radially, varying in both diameter and temperature and producing changes in brightness with a well-defined stable period and amplitude.
A strong direct relationship between a Cepheid varia ...
variable star
A variable star is a star whose brightness as seen from Earth (its apparent magnitude) changes with time. This variation may be caused by a change in emitted light or by something partly blocking the light, so variable stars are classified as e ...
s, have shown them to be of comparable accuracy.[
]
Recurrent novae
Recurrent novae (RNe) are objects that have been seen to experience multiple nova eruptions. As of 2009, there are ten known galactic recurrent novae,[
] as well as several extragalactic
Extragalactic astronomy is the branch of astronomy concerned with objects outside the Milky Way galaxy. In other words, it is the study of all astronomical objects which are not covered by galactic astronomy.
The closest objects in extragalactic ...
ones (in the Andromeda Galaxy
The Andromeda Galaxy (IPA: ), also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224 and originally the Andromeda Nebula, is a barred spiral galaxy with the diameter of about approximately from Earth and the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way. The gal ...
(M31) and the Large Magellanic Cloud
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), or Nubecula Major, is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. At a distance of around 50 kiloparsecs (≈160,000 light-years), the LMC is the second- or third-closest galaxy to the Milky Way, after the ...
). One of these extragalactic novae, M31N 2008-12a, erupts as frequently as once every 12 months. The recurrent nova typically brightens by about 8.6 magnitudes, whereas a classic nova may brighten by more than 12 magnitudes.[ The ten known galactic recurrent novae are listed below.
]
Extragalactic novae
Novae are relatively common in the Andromeda Galaxy
The Andromeda Galaxy (IPA: ), also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224 and originally the Andromeda Nebula, is a barred spiral galaxy with the diameter of about approximately from Earth and the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way. The gal ...
(M31). Approximately several dozen novae (brighter than about apparent magnitude
Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth. An object's apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance from Earth, and any extinction of the object's li ...
20) are discovered in M31 each year. The Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams
The Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) is the official international clearing house for information relating to transient astronomical events.
The CBAT collects and distributes information on comets, natural satellites, novae, su ...
(CBAT) tracked novae in M31, M33, and M81.[
]
See also
References
Further reading
67.48.28.33
*
*
*
External links
*
*
General Catalog of Variable Stars
Sternberg Astronomical Institute
The Sternberg Astronomical Institute (Государственный астрономический институт имени Штернберга in Russian), also known as GAISh (ГАИШ), is a research institution in Moscow, Russia, a divisi ...
, Moscow
AAVSO Variable Star of the Month. Novae: May 2001
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Stellar phenomena
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