as in supernova
astronomy
a star that suddenly increases greatly in brightness and then within a few months or years becomes less bright again
Related Words
Relevance
Example Sentences
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.
Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
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
-
Star, supernova, star, supernova, and so on.—
Big Think,
Big Think,
10 Oct. 2025
-
Astronomers have long puzzled over the apparent lack of luminous red supergiant stars in pre-explosion images, even though models predict that these stars should dominate the population of core-collapse supernova progenitors.—
Sharmila Kuthunur,
Space.com,
8 Oct. 2025
Noun
-
Science fiction has, of course, been portraying exoplanets for decades, and in 1992, radio astronomers Dale Frail and Aleksander Wolszczan discovered planets orbiting a pulsar, the spinning remnant of a massive star that has gone supernova.—
Keith Cooper,
Space.com,
6 Oct. 2025
-
The X-ray data, in purple, shows the hot gas/plasma created by the central pulsar, which is clearly identifiable in both the individual and the composite image.—
Ethan Siegel,
Big Think,
12 Sep. 2025
Noun
-
Additionally, this quasar is also producing jets of particles moving at nearly the speed of light, a rare feature among quasars.—
Rupendra Brahambhatt,
Interesting Engineering,
21 Sep. 2025
-
In the late 1960s astronomers started to make extremely high-resolution observations of distant galaxies called quasars.—
Phil Plait,
Scientific American,
29 Aug. 2025
Noun
-
Another variable is the role of the rival Palestinian Authority (PA), which rules the West Bank.—
Ilan Berman,
MSNBC Newsweek,
10 Oct. 2025
-
Although this variable doesn’t always come into play in our taste tests (an incredible anchovy is an incredible anchovy), the prices for pure vanilla extract vary widely.—
Sam Stone,
Bon Appetit Magazine,
10 Oct. 2025
Noun
-
The album title is a reference to a red supergiant star 10,000 light-years away from Earth.—
Tomás Mier,
Rolling Stone,
18 Sep. 2025
-
Skywatchers on Saturday night will be treated to the gorgeous sight of a waxing crescent moon close to Antares, an unmistakably bright red supergiant star shining in the south.—
Jamie Carter,
Forbes.com,
29 Aug. 2025
Noun
-
When their cores run out of fuel, gravity crushes them inward, triggering supernovae that leave behind a neutron star or black hole.—
Sharmila Kuthunur,
Space.com,
8 Oct. 2025
-
In the 10 years since then, scientists have detected hundreds of black holes coming together, as well as other extreme cosmic events like neutron stars colliding and black holes merging with a neutron star.—
Nell Greenfieldboyce,
NPR,
11 Sep. 2025
Noun
-
The full supercluster would have more than 1 million Ascend chips, according to Huawei.—
Evelyn Cheng,
CNBC,
18 Sep. 2025
-
The chips designed by Huawei serve as the basis of the company’s AI infrastructure, in which a supercluster is connected to multiple superpods.—
Atharva Gosavi,
Interesting Engineering,
18 Sep. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Nova.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/nova. Accessed 16 Oct. 2025.
Copy CitationLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share