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Exploding Star May Be Seen From Earth
fjordboy writes "The star Rho Cas, which can be seen by the naked eye from the Northern Hemisphere, is showing signs that it may be exploding in the near future. Rho exploded in 2000, creating a cloud of gas over 10,000 times the size of earth (which isn't all that large in space scales), however, the same star is showing signs of collapsing which may point to a much larger explosion in the near future, which should be large enough to be seen by backyard astronomers with little to no specialized equipment. MSNBC has more info, Space.com also has the story here and here."
Nova events that are visible to the naked eye don't happen every day, but aren't all that uncommon. In my 20 years of being an active amateur astronomer, I've seen a half dozen or so. Most are very dim and require the use of some sort of chart to tell the nova from nearby stars.
When they are this dim, it is a requirement to get out under dark skys and away from the CRT or LCD.
Nova events that don't get as bright as six or seventh magnitude require some sort of optical aid - perhaps just binoculars - to see. These sorts of events happen all the time.
At mag 4.5 this is a pretty bright star (greek letter named stars usually are pretty bright since they were cataloged hundreds of years ago before the invention of the telescope).
Thus, this one might get bright enough to actually be pretty easy to see. Only time will tell.
After all, as far as we know, some other star has gone supernova and the light will only reach Earth today in the form of an daylight object, or something that is as bright as Venus or even the Moon.
Most of the experienced skywatchers in the world are amateurs. Professional astronomy hardly ever involves directly looking at the sky. The amateurs are the people who go out on their own initiative and look at the sky, get to know small regions containing thousands of stars (or more), and can often immediately spot any change and report it. Back yard astronomers frequently provide historical observation data that professionals refer to later on when it's relevant to whatever they're studying.
Supernova 1987A was first discovered by several such people who've spent most of their lives learning where the stars should be, and could immediately tell that something was different.