Nova Above Thailand

The dazzling planet Venus shines in the evening above the World Heritage Site of Sukhothai. A nova in Sagittarius became visible on those nights of November 2016, bright enough to see with binoculars or to reveal in nightscape photos. Discovered by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), the stellar explosion even approached the limit of naked-eye visibility  A classical nova results from a thermonuclear explosion on the surface of a white dwarf star — a dense star having the size of our Earth but the mass of our Sun. In the featured image, the nova was captured above ancient Wat Mahathat in Sukhothai, Thailand. You can also see the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius), identified with an iconic teapot shape.