Stargazers and astronomers around the world continue to study the constellation Polaris, 3000 light-years from Earth; Here, a long-extinct star is expected to reignite in an explosion powerful enough to briefly rival Polaris in brightness. The stellar body last flared almost 80 years ago and won’t shine for another 80 years, making this event nearly one-of-a-kind.

The stellar remnant, a white dwarf called T Ursa Major fueled by material from a nearby red giant star, revealed a distinct drop in brightness that was “right on top” of what preceded the previous explosion in 1946. Astronomers don’t yet know for sure what caused this drop, but they say it’s only a matter of time before the supernova sates its hunger and explodes as a spectacular supernova. “We know it’s going to explode, that’s obvious,” Edward Zion, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, told Space.com.

This remarkable event is not just a holiday for sky watchers. Astronomers have devoted valuable time at a range of ground-based and space-based telescopes to catalog every detail possible to learn more about supernovae, whose dynamics remain unclear with only a few explosions recorded over the decades. T Coronae Borealis, or T Cor Bor for short, belongs to an elite club of ten known periodic supernovae in our home galaxy, the Milky Way, and offers astronomers a rare chance to closely examine a stellar corpse that has absorbed matter so much that it annihilates it. It bends and explodes, causing a huge explosion.

According to astronomers, the information obtained during this event will eventually form the basis of models of how stars work.

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope observes the T Cor Hole every day, often every few hours. When a supernova explodes, gamma-ray emission also spikes with a similar increase in supernova brightness, allowing astronomers to understand how hot the material became shortly after the flare and how fast it was moving away from the white dwarf. Astronomers also want to learn more about how shock waves, the details of which are not well understood, would travel through space in the moments after the explosion.