Nova RS Oph, visible to the naked eye
... albeit barely.
RS Ophiuchi is a very distant and therefore very faint binary in constellation Ophiuchus (the serpent bearer), which can be seen in the south around 11 p.m.. The binary consists of a white dwarf star orbiting a red giant.
The gravity of the white dwarf hoovers up material from the red giant, so it gains mass and becomes a rather fat dwarf.
About every 15 years, in a huge thermonuclear explosion, the white dwarf sheds most of the material it has accreted in the past 15 years, much as a glutton empties his overfull stomach by sticking a finger into his throat.
When that happens, the brightness of the star rises by about a factor of 10,000, from a very faint +12.5 mag or so to a value of +5 mag, or, as now, even slightly lower, so one can see it with the naked eye, if there is not too much light pollution and you know where to look.
Because RS Oph is 7500 light years distant, everything we see now already happened 7500 years ago, in the neolithic age.
Don't bother to view this on a mobile device.
Shot with a Canon ESO6D and a Leica Summicron-R 50mm
Nova RS Oph, visible to the naked eye
... albeit barely.
RS Ophiuchi is a very distant and therefore very faint binary in constellation Ophiuchus (the serpent bearer), which can be seen in the south around 11 p.m.. The binary consists of a white dwarf star orbiting a red giant.
The gravity of the white dwarf hoovers up material from the red giant, so it gains mass and becomes a rather fat dwarf.
About every 15 years, in a huge thermonuclear explosion, the white dwarf sheds most of the material it has accreted in the past 15 years, much as a glutton empties his overfull stomach by sticking a finger into his throat.
When that happens, the brightness of the star rises by about a factor of 10,000, from a very faint +12.5 mag or so to a value of +5 mag, or, as now, even slightly lower, so one can see it with the naked eye, if there is not too much light pollution and you know where to look.
Because RS Oph is 7500 light years distant, everything we see now already happened 7500 years ago, in the neolithic age.
Don't bother to view this on a mobile device.
Shot with a Canon ESO6D and a Leica Summicron-R 50mm