LIVE - Betelgeuse Asteroid Supernova

[jeff of pa]

Started streaming on Apr 21, 2024
Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star of spectral type M1-2 and one of the largest visible to the naked eye. It is usually the tenth-brightest star in the night sky and, after Rigel, the second-brightest in the constellation of Orion.

 

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[DizzyDigger]

So they have a live cam on it while waiting for it to go supernova?

 

[jeff of pa]

by the title and the cover pic and the video it already is

No Waiting Necessary

 

[Red-Coat]

Don't hold your breath! Just a bit of background:

Betelgeuse will ultimately run out of fuel and go supernova as a result of core collapse. Exactly when that happens will depend on its mass, which is not reliably known, but current estimates suggest it has between about 20,000 – 140,000 years of remaining ‘life’; probably around 100,000 years maximum. Bear in mind that, if it went supernova today, we wouldn’t see it until about 650 years later; conversely, if we observed it today, then it happened about 650 years ago. Contrary to media speculation, the star’s core is unlikely to be massive enough to create a black hole, and the more likely consequence is that it will become a neutron star with a magnitude of approximately 1.5M. There’s unlikely to be a gamma ray burst and the star is not close enough for X-ray, UV radiation or ejected material to cause any significant effects on Earth, but of course the ‘usual suspects’ are linking it to doomsday predictions relating to the Mayan calendrical apocalypse among other things. The ‘supernova danger zone’ is regarded as about 50 light years away, and Betelgeuse is around 700 light years distant.

Betelgeuse appears to undergo short periods of heavy mass loss coupled with decreases in brightness and subsequent return to more normal levels. What has created speculation that a supernova may be imminent is the star’s recent erratic behaviour since about 2009 (notably a dip in Magnitude of 0.5 since late January this year). Such changes (although unusual) are not without precedent. Most astronomers believe the observed changes are more likely related to starspots and surface mass ejection which then cools to create dust that causes dimming (supported by observations from the Hubble telescope) and not the result of more fundamental changes heralding an imminent supernova.

The suggestion that Betelgeuse may have less than 300 years of remaining fuel in its core and that “a core collapse leading to a supernova explosion is expected in a few tens of years” is a minority view that comes from the 2023 study by Saio, Nandal, Meynet, and Ekstöm. It’s unpublished and not peer-reviewed, but available online as a pre-print from Cornell University’s arXiv repository. The media picked up on it with various degrees of misinterpretation and exaggeration (CNN, for example, reported: "A giant red star is acting weird and scientists think it may be about to explode"), with some reports suggesting it’s going to happen in the next year. Social media speculation was then rife with misconceptions of the likelihood of it happening soon, often coupled with suggestions of an impending apocalypse.

When the supernova happens (as it undoubtedly will, but unlikely to be in our lifetimes), if humanity is still around to see it, then it will be the first observation of a supernova in our Galaxy since the 17th Century.

 

[jeff of pa]

Too much for me & My Short attention Span to Read

But My Understanding it Actually Blew up Thousands of years ago, & The Supernova Thing is When it can be seen here

 

[DizzyDigger]

Just checked over on Cloudy Nights, and there's no discussion of Betelgeuse. If there was indeed something going on with the star, they'd certainly be chatting about it there.

 

[Red-Coat]

Too much for me & My Short attention Span to Read

But My Understanding it Actually Blew up Thousands of years ago, & The Supernova Thing is When it can be seen here

No, Betelgeuse still exists as a red supergiant (or at least is still seen as existing, remembering that what we see is a 650-year-old view). All such stars ultimately exhaust the helium in their cores (within one or two million years) and then start to burn carbon. That continues for no more than a few thousand years with the fusion of heavier elements until an iron core builds up, which then inevitably collapses to produce a supernova. Betelgeuse has reached the stage of carbon fusion but hasn’t yet accumulated a sufficiently large iron core to go supernova.

 

[Red-Coat]

Just checked over on Cloudy Nights, and there's no discussion of Betelgeuse. If there was indeed something going on with the star, they'd certainly be chatting about it there.

Well, there is 'something going on', in that the star is behaving erratically... notably a recent significant drop in its brightness. That may or may not be significant, but it's not a supernova, and there are only a minority of astronomers who believe the observations to be indicative of an 'imminent' supernova (and, even then, 'imminent' in astronomical terminology doesn't necessarily mean in our lifetimes).

 

[DizzyDigger]

Well, there is 'something going on', in that the star is behaving erratically... notably a recent significant drop in its brightness.

Agreed..that is something, although the current theory is that the latest reduction in brightness was caused by dust.