Zeta Tauri is the kind of star that few of us really notice. It’s at the tip of one of the horns of Taurus, the bull. But it shines at only third magnitude. That’s no problem under dark skies, but tough to see from a light-polluted city. It’ll be much easier to find before dawn tomorrow, though, because it’ll stand just a whisker from Venus, the brilliant “morning star.”

Zeta Tauri is actually two stars, not one. They’re separated by a bit more than the distance from Earth to the Sun. But at the system’s distance of about 440 light-years from Earth, it’s impossible to see them as individual stars, even with the largest of telescopes. In fact, it’s tough to even learn the nature of the two stars.

One of the stars is easy to figure out. It’s about 11 times the mass of the Sun, five times wider than the Sun, and thousands of times brighter. But its companion isn’t fully understood. It may be a white dwarf – a stellar corpse as heavy as the Sun.

The main star is blowing a strong wind of gas into space. That’s formed a cloud around the star. The white dwarf may pull in some of that material. As it piles up on the white dwarf it gets much hotter, making the system a strong source of X-rays.

In the next few million years, the heavier star of Zeta Tauri is likely to explode as a supernova. That’ll make it impossible to overlook this currently meager star.

Script by Damond Benningfield