Magnitude of Betelgeuse, starting in 1970
Posted on 12/31/2019 10:26:42 AM PST by jonatron
When you take a look at the stars in the night sky, they generally appear the same regardless of time. Only a small number of stars ever appear to change on human timescales, as most stars burn through their fuel very stably, with almost no variation in their continuous brightness. The few stars that do appear to change are either intrinsically variable, members of multi-star systems, or go through an enormous evolutionary change.
When very massive stars get close to the end of their lives, they start varying by tremendous amounts, and do so with significant irregularity. At a critical moment, most of these stars will run out of the nuclear fuel holding up their cores against collapse, and the resulting implosion leads to a runaway cataclysm: a core-collapse supernova. Could Betelgeuse, whose variability intensified in a novel way over the last few days, be about to explode? Here's what astronomers know so far.
The last time our species witnessed a supernova from within our own galaxy with the naked human eye, the year was 1604. A new point of light in the sky suddenly appeared, brightened, and briefly outshone every single star before slowly fading away. This wasn't the first such event, as prior supernovae had illuminated Earth's skies like this in 1572, 1054, and 1006, among others.
But all of those supernovae occurred from stars that were thousands of light-years away, with Kepler's 1604 explosion being traced back to a stellar remnant located some 20,000 light-years across the Milky Way. Of all the stars we see in the night sky, one bright member stands out as the most fascinating possibility as our galaxy's next supernova: Betelgeuse, one of our sky's 10 brightest stars, located a mere 640 light-years away.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Well, if it is, then it already has. :)
So if it explodes today, it will have exploded 640 years ago.
I don’t even know what it is. But I DO know it will be blamed on Trump
I’m pretty sure we can still blame our fossil fuel use for it anyway.
Don’t say the name three times in a row and it’ll be fine.
Some stars just can’t keep their stuff together.
Not yet.
Don’t they mean did Betelgeuse explode 640 years ago?
Someone get grrrrrrrreta on the phone STAT!
It blowed up real good like.
“Betelgeuse” —Arabic for “Orion’s armpit.”
Magnitude of Betelgeuse, starting in 1970
“Well, if it is, then it already has. :)”
Yep, at 640 light years away, it probably has.
Hope so. It would be very cool.
Zaphod is likely responsible.
we’ve seen a few explode since trump won...
Be great if they actually exploded...:)
Whoever wrote this thing must have slept through grammar class.
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