new star

•
On this date: June 8, 1918, 90 years ago today, American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard (born in Nashville, Tennessee) looked up into the night sky of Wyoming and saw a star he had never seen before. At the same hour, seventeen-year-old Leslie Peltier of Delphos, Ohio saw it too. Soon the new star in the constellation Aquila became brighter than any other star except Sirius.

The new found star was 1200 light years away, the brightest nova—a star that suddenly becomes thousands of times brighter and then gradually fades to its original intensity—seen on planet Earth in 300 years.

Today the star cannot be seen with the naked eye.

•