as in supernova
astronomy
a star that suddenly increases greatly in brightness and then within a few months or years becomes less bright again
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Recent Examples of nova
Even though novas are exceptionally bright, supernovas are brighter—reaching billions of times brighter than the sun at their peak.
—
Elizabeth Gamillo, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 July 2025
Recorded live at the Lincoln Center, the band plays a bossa-nova take on the song while Gaga sings solo, wearing one of Cher’s own wigs.
—Kristen S. Hé, Vulture, 19 Mar. 2025
To get a separate measure of how unusual this is, the researchers placed 8 million novas around the center of the galaxy, with the distribution being random but biased to match the galaxy's brightness under the assumption that novas will be more frequent in areas with more stars.
—John Timmer, Ars Technica, 27 Sep. 2024
Elizabeth Gamillo, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 July 2025
Recorded live at the Lincoln Center, the band plays a bossa-nova take on the song while Gaga sings solo, wearing one of Cher’s own wigs.
—Kristen S. Hé, Vulture, 19 Mar. 2025
To get a separate measure of how unusual this is, the researchers placed 8 million novas around the center of the galaxy, with the distribution being random but biased to match the galaxy's brightness under the assumption that novas will be more frequent in areas with more stars.
—John Timmer, Ars Technica, 27 Sep. 2024
Recent Examples of Synonyms for nova
Noun
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The most massive stars will die in a core-collapse supernova, often within merely a few million years after their birth.—
Big Think,
Big Think,
31 Mar. 2026
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This image depicts the supernova remnant SN 185, found some 8,000 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the sun's closest sibling, the triple star Alpha Centauri.—
Brett Tingley,
Space.com,
27 Mar. 2026
Noun
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And magnetars are the most extreme of all: most of them are newborn pulsars that possess magnetic fields up to 1,000 times stronger than normal.—
Joseph Howlett,
Scientific American,
11 Mar. 2026
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As the pulsar spins, these beams sweep across the cosmos like the beams of light from a lighthouse.—
Robert Lea,
Space.com,
21 Feb. 2026
Noun
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This region is referred to as an active galactic nucleus (AGN), and its bright emissions are seen on Earth as a quasar.—
Robert Lea,
Space.com,
17 Mar. 2026
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The team spotted the distant quasar, an actively feeding supermassive black hole, using observations from the Subaru Telescope.—
Georgina Jedikovska,
Interesting Engineering,
23 Jan. 2026
Noun
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And that’s the key variable driving his OPOY odds.—
Rowan Fisher-Shotton,
MSNBC Newsweek,
29 Mar. 2026
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The most dangerous variable, instructors often say, is not the snowpack.—
Jane Sadowsky,
Fortune,
28 Mar. 2026
Noun
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However, in 2014, the appearance of this supergiant began to change.—
Robert Lea,
Space.com,
26 Feb. 2026
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With it, Venezuela’s transformation to a petroleum supergiant had begun — for better or worse.—
David Goldman,
CNN Money,
5 Jan. 2026
Noun
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The solution was to break the problem down, considering each neutron star individually, and its companion as just a source of gravitational tides.—
Keith Cooper,
Space.com,
15 Mar. 2026
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When such a star was some 10 to 25 times the mass of our sun, that remnant is usually a neutron star.—
Joseph Howlett,
Scientific American,
11 Mar. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Nova.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/nova. Accessed 4 Apr. 2026.
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