as in supernova
astronomy
a star that suddenly increases greatly in brightness and then within a few months or years becomes less bright again
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Recent Examples of nova
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
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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This image, captured by a South African radio telescope named MeerKAT, also shows the ghostly, bubble-like remnants of supernovas that exploded over millennia.—
Eric Berger,
ArsTechnica,
8 Apr. 2025
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Type 1a supernovas are very helpful for scientists, because supernovas tend to explode with roughly the same amount of energy.—
Julian Dossett,
Space.com,
7 Apr. 2025
Noun
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Radio pulsars, by comparison, produce much shorter signals — often mere seconds.—
Paul Smaglik,
Discover Magazine,
12 Mar. 2025
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Previously, radio observatories searched the sky for new pulsars but rarely lingered long enough to pick up slower signals.—
ByDaniel Clery,
science.org,
4 Dec. 2024
Noun
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Among its findings are the measurements of nearly 15 million galaxies and quasars, some of the brightest objects in the universe.—
Ashley Strickland,
CNN Money,
2 Apr. 2025
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Radio quasars are the subclass of black holes that produce the most powerful energy and jets.—
David Garofalo,
The Conversation,
31 Mar. 2025
Noun
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Companies isolate variables, split audiences into test and control groups and measure new experiences against existing ones.—
Amit Ashkenazi,
Forbes.com,
17 Apr. 2025
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There are simply too many variables to consider, including the genetic influence of does on their male offspring and the role that maturity plays in antler growth.—
Andrew McKean,
Outdoor Life,
17 Apr. 2025
Noun
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Imaging the innermost circumstellar environment of the red supergiant WOH G64 in the Large Magellanic Cloud.—
Tom Howarth,
Newsweek,
21 Nov. 2024
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Unlike other supergiants, however, a segment of Bathynomus vaderi’s back section narrows and curves backward in a unique way.—
Margherita Bassi,
Smithsonian Magazine,
27 Jan. 2025
Noun
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Normally, neutrons are bound within atomic nuclei or in the matter making up extraordinarily powerful stars called neutron stars.—
Charles Q. Choi,
Space.com,
7 Apr. 2025
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The findings, published in the same issue of Nature, provide additional support that a neutron star created the fast radio burst.—
Ashley Strickland,
CNN,
24 Jan. 2025
Noun
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This sell-off indicated a sense that the next wave of AI models may not require the tens of thousands of top-end GPUs that Silicon Valley behemoths have amassed into computing superclusters for the purposes of accelerating their AI innovation.—
Miles Klee,
Rolling Stone,
28 Jan. 2025
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For instance, Oracle recently chose AMD’s accelerated computing chips to power its latest supercluster for high-intensity AI workloads, after testing showed that AMD’s GPUs delivered low latency and strong performance at a competitive price.—
Trefis Team,
Forbes,
16 Jan. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Nova.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/nova. Accessed 22 Apr. 2025.
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