aww shit nigga

A team of astronomers is making a bold forecast: A binary star found in the summer constellation Cygnus the swan will burst into a red nova sometime in 2022.

When the two stars in the binary system crash into one another, they will create a brick-red beacon so bright that sky gazers will see it with the naked eye, Larry Molnar of Calvin College said Friday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Grapevine, Tex.

As the constellation Cygnus glides gracefully along the Milky Way every late spring and summer, the cosmic bird’s left wing houses a faint binary star called KIC 9832227. The two stars spinning around one another are merging, on a path to an explosion that will result in a red nova, said Molnar and his colleagues.

theres more in the article, but its quite interesting that something thats unable to be seen through the naked eye will appear to something to the brightness of sirius and betelgeuse

It's so weird to me that we talk as if this is happening in the future-tense. In reality, these stars collided nearly two millennia ago. Super neat, though.

How long will this nova last?

one article stated itll be about a month. keep in mind almost a thousand years ago the crab nebula was seen by older civilizations and had records kept by astronomers back then. but that was a supernova, so it was around for a couple years iirc. this one is a nova, 2 stars orbiting into one another