(WBFF) -- Gaze into the spooky sky on Halloween night because you might just see a star rise from its interstellar grave!
"'Zombie stars' aren't as scary as you might think," said Knicole Colón, Operations Project Scientist at NASA Goddard Flight Center.
According to a NASA official, roughly every 80 years a star system known as T Coronae Borealis explodes. This ignites the surface of one of its two stars, causing it to become so bright that it may be visible from Earth with the naked eye.
The official said the system is composed of two stars that orbit each other: a white dwarf, which is remnant of a dead star, and a red giant -- a star in its final death throes.
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The white dwarf's strong gravity siphons stellar material from its red giant partner, feeding from it like a vampire, according to a NASA official.
Then, comes the big boom! It explodes, in an event called a nova.
The explosion only affects the surface layers, allowing the whole process to occur again and again.
Scientists are expected to learn a lot from this because it hasn't happened in 89 years!