14 DAY TRIAL // Back in 1670, astronomers found themselves looking at a previously unknown freakishly bright spot that appeared seemingly out of the blue and without warning high up in the sky.
At that time and for centuries to come, it was assumed that the bizarre bright spot was no more and no less than a nova, i.e. a star displaying a sudden but only temporary increase in brightness.
Seeing how the supposed nova kept varying in brightness and even disappeared only to reappear shortly after on several occasions, nobody dared question its identity.
The bright spot was clearly behaving like a nova and therefore had to be one, 17th century astronomers concluded. They even went as far as to name the bright spot Nova Vulpeculae.
The thing is that, according to a paper published in yesterday's issue of the journal Nature, this bright spot was not a temperamental star. Instead, it was the sight of two stars colliding with one another.
To reveal the true nature of Nova Vulpeculae, researchers with the European Southern Observatory used telescopes and other instruments to study the makeup of the debris and gas it left behind.
Apparently, the chemical profile of the space region where Nova Vulpeculae was documented in 1670 does not match that of cosmic areas accommodating for stars that experience shifts in brightness.
It is, however, strikingly similar to what is left behind on those very rare occasions when two stars get too close to one another, collide and have their guts spill out into the space around them.
That's right, it looks like what our 17th century forefathers noticed shining bright in the sky wasn't just one star acting out hoping to land a spot in astronomy books or for some other reasons.
On the contrary, the bright spot that came to be known as Nova Vulpeculae was the sight of two stars crashing into one another and being destroyed in the process. Pretty cool, right?