Future Fireworks

With the Fourth of July coming up, we predict that you’ll soon be seeing fireworks in the night sky. And some astronomers in Michigan are predicting fireworks in the sky as well. They expect a star in Cygnus, the swan, to explode in about five years. If they’re right, the blast will be as bright as the North Star.
KIC 9832227 was first studied in detail by Kepler, a planet-hunting space telescope. Its observations showed that the system’s brightness was changing. Larry Molnar and Daniel van Noord of Calvin College were intrigued by the star, so they kept an eye on it for a while.
Van Noord concluded that the system is a contact binary — two stars that actually touch other. And their contact is getting more intimate — their cores are getting closer together.
By comparing the system to a contact binary that exploded a few years ago, Molnar predicts that the stars will merge in 2022, give or take a year. The merger will trigger an explosion. For a few weeks, the system will shine 10,000 t