Not to be outdone by our own star the Sun and its recent eclipse drama, a couple of stars in the constellation Corona Borealis are cooking up their own fantastic display when they explode sometime soon ~ at least according to the astronomy community.
Corona Borealis is also known as the starry crown, a beautiful little constellation appearing like a tiara hung in the night between the constellations Hercules and Boötes.
Within this constellation is a binary star system that rhythmically exhibits explosive behavior, so much so that they become visible to the naked eye, when normally they’re only bright enough to be seen through binoculars.
What does it mean to have an explosion of stars from the crown? An explosion is different from a super nova, which marks the end of a star’s cycle — an explosion is a recurring event.
The one that NASA is predicting sometime between now and September this year is based on the history of these two: They first exploded in 1866, and then again 80 years later, in 1946, so they’re about due.
If and when the stars in the crown explode, it will be like a star appearing in the night where there hadn’t been one before. Then, it will be visible for several nights in a row, as though crowning us all, which brings to mind the words of Paul from his Letters to the Corinthians:
There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.
A passage which ends with an interesting imagination on what it means when the stars explode into view: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
