Russian astronomers have discovered a new star in the Milky Way

The New Milky Way project team (Astroverts astrofarm, Arkhyz) on the night of July 17-18, 2025, discovered a flash of a previously unknown star, whose brightness increased by +12 magnitudes, in the area of the border of three constellations: Snake, Shield and Eagle.

The announcement of this discovery was posted at the Central Bureau of Astronomical Telegrams (Harvard, USA). The following evening, using the 2.5-meter telescope of the Caucasian Mountain Observatory of the Moscow State University Traffic Police, a spectrum was obtained that confirmed that this flare was a classic nova (a thermonuclear explosion on the surface of a white dwarf that absorbs matter from a nearby donor star).

This is the sixth new star discovered by the NMW team, out of seven new stars found in Russia over the past 35 years. Astroverts is a portfolio project of the Frontiers of Science Guild.

As a rule, a new star consists of a pair: a white dwarf and a red dwarf. A white dwarf attracts matter, mostly hydrogen, from a red dwarf. When a critical density is reached on the surface of a white dwarf, a thermonuclear explosion occurs, which can increase the brightness of this stellar pair up to a million times, which corresponds to 15 magnitudes.

The increase in brightness occurs quickly, sometimes by several magnitudes per day. At its peak, the brightness persists throughout the day, after which a slow decrease in brightness begins. New stars can be observed for two to three weeks, but sometimes their visibility lasts for years.

"The discovery of a new star by the Astroverts team proves that even in an era of technological development, powerful instruments, and large observatories, we can constantly learn something new about the universe," Ilya Cech, co-founder of the Frontiers of Science Guild, summed up.

In early July, Nikolai Samus, a leading researcher at the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Izvestia that, according to forecasts by Soviet researchers, the flare of the star T of the Northern Corona could occur soon. The star was discovered in the 60s of the 19th century and classified as a new one.

All important news is on the Izvestia channel in the MAX messenger.