A tight pair of stars got a lot tighter a few years ago. The stars merged, forming a single star. And it’s still settling into its new configuration.

V1309 Scorpii produced a brilliant outburst in 2008. At first, it was classified as a classical nova. Such an eruption occurs when a small dead star pulls gas from a close companion. When enough gas piles up, it causes a nuclear explosion.

Over the months after V1309 erupted, though, it became clear that something else had happened. The two stars had merged, forming a rare beast called a red nova. The merger produced a brilliant flash, and expelled lots of gas and dust at half a million miles per hour.

Continued study showed that the original stars were quite different. One was about half again as massive as the Sun, while the other was just half of the Sun’s mass.

Since the outburst, the system has gotten fainter and bluer. That could mean it’s becoming a blue straggler – a star that looks younger and brighter as the result of a merger. Or it could be headed toward a phase known as a planetary nebula – expelling its outer layers, leaving behind only a dead core. Astronomers continue to watch to see what happens.

V1309 is in Scorpius, which is low in the southern sky at dawn. Tomorrow, it’s just a tick to the lower left of the Moon. But it’s thousands of light-years away, so it’s too faint to see without a telescope.

Script by Damond Benningfield