Corona Borealis's brightest star, Alphecca, is already described elsewhere as the crown's one named jewel. A much fainter, far stranger star in the same small arc has drawn more attention from professional astronomers in recent years than Alphecca ever has.
T Coronae Borealis, nicknamed the Blaze Star, is a recurrent nova, a binary system that periodically brightens by a factor of thousands within a single night before fading back to invisibility to the naked eye. Recorded outbursts occurred in 1866 and again in 1946, roughly eighty years apart, and the pattern of dimming that preceded the 1946 eruption was observed recurring in the star in the early 2020s, leading astronomers to watch closely for another outburst on a similar timescale.
A recurrent nova of this kind is understood to result from a white dwarf pulling material from a companion star until enough has accumulated on its surface to trigger a sudden burst of nuclear fusion, a process that repeats roughly on schedule rather than happening once, unlike an ordinary nova or a supernova that destroys or permanently alters the star involved.
Ariadne's crown, set among the stars for a wedding gift in Greek myth, holds within its faint arc a star whose most notable property has nothing to do with jewels or marriages: it is one of the very few stars in the sky whose next dramatic event astronomers can actually predict in advance.