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State & Union: 2 'once-in-a-lifetime' celestial events in 1 year

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If the total solar eclipse was not enough excitement for skywatchers, NASA reports there will be another opportunity to see a "once-in-a-lifetime" event in 2024.

A star system, located 3,000 light years away from Earth, has been predicted by NASA to become visible to the unaided eye (no special glasses) sometime this year. The event is being called a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity, as the nova outburst only occurs about every 80 years.

The upcoming nova of the T Coronae Borealis (T CrB) star system last occurred in 1946, and astronomers believe it will do it again sometime in 2024, according to NASA. A nova is a sudden, short-lived brightening of an otherwise inconspicuous star, the space agency reported.

Bill Cooke, of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at Alabama's Marshall Space Flight Center, told AL.com that the timing of the explosion is much harder to predict than the eclipse, but he said when it happens it will be "something you'll remember."

NASA reported that once the outburst is at its highest, it should be visible to the unaided eye for several days and just over a week with binoculars, before it dims again.

The celestial event will take place near the constellation Corona Borealis, or the Northern Crown, a small, semicircular arc bear Bootes and Hercules, according to NASA.

This is where the outburst will appear as a "new" bright star, making this recurring nova one of only five in our galaxy.

So, when is the big event? We're learning that's hard to predict.

"We know from the last eruption back in 1946 that the star will get dimmer for just over a year before rapidly increasing in brightness," William J. Cooke, the lead for the NASA Meteoroid Environments Office, told CNN's Ashley Strickland. "T Coronae Borealis began to dim in March of last year, so some researchers are expecting it to go nova between now and September."

So stay tuned.

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