Betelgeuse is already a red giant, one quite near the end of its evolution, ~99% of its lifetime behind it. “Like everyone, I would love to see it go supernova,” said Guinan. So astronomers don’t really know whether the current dimming event is leading up to a supernova. The dimming of Betelgeuse was even more exciting because it’s a well-known fact that this star will someday explode. So, when this star detonates, the explosion will be bright enough to cast shadows on Earth at night and will be visible during the day for a few months, at least. Betelgeuse is huge and bloated, wielding 20 times the sunâs heft. Betelgeuse, located some 722 light years away in the constellation of Orion, has likely been a red supergiant for as long as 100,000 years, says Guinan.
Nothing. Itâs whatâs known as a variable star, and its shifts in brightness have been closely studied for decades.
He says that although he’s unsure what has caused its strange brightness fluctuations, Betelgeuse is not likely to undergo a supernova explosion anytime soon. And this is our closest candidate. However, it is unusual for one of the skyâs most prominent points of light to fade so noticeably, prompting scientists to consider the possibility that something more exciting could be about to happen: Betelgeuse might explode and die, briefly blazing brighter than the full moon before vanishing from our night sky forever. Why the star became so faint; it’s out of character for Betelgeuse to do this, he says. As Betelgeuse burns through fuel in its core, it has swollen to massive proportions. The red supergiant star appears to be in no danger of imminently exploding, even though a recent, dramatic dip in brightness hinted that it could be on its last legs. Bubbles of material rise from inside the star to its surface and sink back down, changing the mix of hotter and cooler stuff on the star’s surface. The explosion will be about half as bright as the full Moon, Guinan said. The star, which is visible in the Orion constellation, is actually smaller and closer than previously believed, researchers discovered. And when Betelgeuse does blow, the cataclysm will be bright enough to shine in Eartht's daytime skies. Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are showing that the unexpected dimming of the supergiant star Betelgeuse was most likely caused by an immense amount of hot material ejected into space, forming a dust cloud that blocked starlight coming from Betelgeuse's surface. “It kept getting fainter,” Guinan said. “In December the star kept getting fainter than we have ever observed in our 25 years of continuous photometry,” says Guinan. As it pulses, and as those convective cells shrink and expand, Betelgeuseâs brightness fluctuates. By mid-December, it had dropped several places on that list, to 21st brightest. Betelgeuse has 100,000 Years.”, I'm a science journalist and host of Cosmic Controversy (brucedorminey.podbean.com) as well as author of "Distant Wanderers: the Search for Planets Beyond the Solar, I'm a science journalist and host of Cosmic Controversy (brucedorminey.podbean.com) as well as author of "Distant Wanderers: the Search for Planets Beyond the Solar System." But Betelgeuse caught the attention of astronomers around the world in the fall of 2019 when it began to dim unexpectedly and continued to fade through February. © CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. "This material was two to four times more luminous than the star's normal brightness," said Andrea Dupree, associate director at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and lead author on the study, in a NASA release. Rumors of Betelgeuseâs impending death have been greatly exaggerated.
Anyone lucky enough to be around would be able to see it shine during the day for months until it fades away. When astronomers recently aimed the VLT at Betelgeuse, they saw a star that looked quite different from one year ago.
âIt's actually quite rare to study a star this well pre-explosion, whenever that happens,â Nance says. If you dropped it into our solar system, it would swallow Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, the asteroid belt's various worlds whole and Jupiter would end up as a snack, too. Or ⦠maybe Betelgeuse has already exploded and we have not yet seen it happen. âThe surface is such a surprise.â. (See how many constellations you can identify with our interactive quiz.). Guinan says that would involve either a cool star spot forming in the southern hemisphere of the star or perhaps a strong pulsation where the bottom half of the star is cool and dimmer. "Only Hubble gives us this evidence of what led up to the dimming.". This initial brightness would last a few months before slowly fading away, he says. The dimming of Betelgeuse is not unusual per se. About 700 light-years away, the star is a young red supergiant, bloated and lumpy, thatâs so big it would balloon out to Jupiter if it were parked in place of the sun. "With Hubble, we see the material as it left the star's visible surface and moved out through the atmosphere, before the dust formed that caused the star to appear to dim," said Andrea Dupree, lead researcher and associate director of The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, in a statement. The bright, ruddy star Betelgeuse (left) is part of this famous stellar pattern. If it happened on the opposite side of Betelgeuse, we'd likely never even know. What they do know is that it’d be pretty unlikely for the explosion to go off now when there’s so much uncertainty in their understanding of Betelgeuse’s behavior and even its age.
Recent studies suggest that the star will most likely explode within the next million years, and perhaps as soon as 100,000 years from now. Observations in December provided by ground-based telescopes revealed the star experienced a particular dip in brightness concentrated in its southern hemisphere. âBut I am excited [for] when it does.â.
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