Never mind Betelgeuse. We could soon see a supernova explosion as bright as the Moon

A new supernova may soon light up our skies.

An international team of astronomers have been studying a greedy white dwarf in a binary star system called V Sagittae, which is just 10,000 lightyears from Earth.

It’s burning unusually brightly as it speedily consumes its much larger companion star.

In fact, it’s stripping this stellar material so fast it can’t handle all of it, creating a halo of shining gas that surrounds both stars.

"V Sagittae is no ordinary star system," says Phil Charles from Southampton University, UK, one of the study’s authors.

"It’s the brightest of its kind and has baffled experts since it was discovered in 1902.

"Our study shows that this extreme brightness is down to the white dwarf sucking the life out of its companion star, using the accreted matter to turn it into a blazing inferno.

"It’s a process so intense," he continues, "that it’s going thermonuclear on the white dwarf’s surface, shining like a beacon in the night sky."

Using observations from the ESO’s Very Large Telescope, the team believe that the high speed at which the cannibal star is consuming its larger twin means it will meet a cataclysmic end very soon.

The explosion – which could shine as bright as the Moon – could still be years or even decades away.

"The matter accumulating on the white dwarf is likely to produce a nova outburst in the coming years, during which V Sagittae would become visible with the naked eye," says Pablo Rodríguez-Gil,
co-author of the study.

Read the full study at academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mnras/staf1284/8233646