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.
Either way, it seems likely that Betelgeuse will be the Milky Way galaxy's next supernova but this wouldn't happen anytime soon. It could even be another 100,000 years before Betelgeuse's light is finally extinguished.
Like other red supergiants, it will end its life by exploding in a dramatic supernova. This will be so bright that we can see it during the daytime on Earth.
Answer and Explanation: Betelgeuse is approximately 624.1 light-years away from the sun. This means it is still in the Milky Way galaxy, the same galaxy we are in, but it is farther away from us than many of our neighboring stars. Light-years are the distance light can travel in one Earth year.
How long would it take for us to know if Betelgeuse exploded?
Answer and Explanation: It is given that the star Betelgeuse is about 600 light-years away. When it explodes, the electromagnetic radiation coming from it will take 600 years to reach us. Therefore, the explosion will be noticed by us after 600 years.
Betelgeuse Distance Was Wrong and Other Surprising Discoveries
Is Betelgeuse exploding right now 2023?
Although some hype up Betelgeuse's looming doom, its coming explosion, called a supernova, might not happen for at least tens of thousands of years, if not more like some 100,000.
This fiery demise is what astronomers call a supernova explosion, and in the case of Betelgeuse, it will be a spectacular sight for observers on Earth. Since the star is only 650 light-years from Earth, those layers of gas and dust will shine as bright as the full moon in our sky for several weeks.
“We conclude that Betelgeuse should currently be in a late phase (or near the end) of the core carbon burning,” the paper notes. “After carbon is exhausted in the core, a core-collapse leading to a supernova explosion is expected in in a few tens [of] years.”
Dr Stanimir Metchev also said that it was unlikely that it would happen in our lifetime. He said the last stages of a star's life can last hundreds of thousands of years.
Betelgeuse does not have any planets orbiting it, as far as we know. Additionally, the position of Betelgeuse is RA 05 h 55 m 10.3053 s, dec+07° 24'25.4” [1-4].
To the ancient Egyptians, the constellation was Osiris, a god and primeval king in the culture's mythology. In some myths originating in the Americas, Betelgeuse represented a wound on Orion, perhaps because of the star's red color.
Now consider this: It's believed that Betelgeuse, a giant red star in the constellation Orion, is approaching the end of its life cycle. Most scientists believe it will become a supernova in the near future.
While Betelgeuse's supernova is not expected to cause direct harm to life on Earth, it could potentially have some atmospheric effects. The explosion would release a burst of ultraviolet radiation, which could deplete the ozone layer temporarily.
Will its supernova destroy Earth? Whenever Betelgeuse does blow up, our planet Earth is too far away for this explosion to harm, much less destroy, life on Earth. Studies indicate we'd have to be within 160 light-years of a supernova for it to harm us. And Betelgeuse is perhaps four times this distance.
Betelgeuse is an enormous star. If we were to place it at the center of our solar system, it would extend all the way to Jupiter. The star's size, combined with its position in our galaxy, the Milky Way, allows astronomers to study Betelgeuse in better detail than most stars.
Betelgeuse will, eventually, go supernova. However, scientists expect this isn't likely to happen for about another 100,000 years, at which point Betelgeuse will become either a neutron star or black hole. The star's final fate depends on how much material is left after the supernova event.
Astronomers have discovered what may be the oldest and most distant galaxy ever observed. The galaxy, called HD1, dates from a bit more than 300 million years after the Big Bang that marked the origin of the universe some 13.8 billion years ago, researchers said on Thursday.
The stars seem to twinkle in the night sky due to the effects of the Earth's atmosphere. When starlight enters the atmosphere, it is affected by winds in the atmosphere and areas with different temperatures and densities. This causes the light from the star to twinkle when seen from the ground.
The Wolf-Rayet star WR 102 is the hottest star known, at 210,000 K. In this infrared composite from WISE and Spitzer, it's barely visible, as almost all of its energy is in shorter-wavelength light.
Betelgeuse is of a lovely orange-red colour and is decidedly variable; at times it can rise almost to magnitude 0.0. I have seen it equal Rigel – while at its dimmest it is comparable with Aldebaran. It has a rough period of just over five years and it is very rough indeed.
Today, Betelgeuse is one of the largest known stars, measuring more than 700 million miles (1.2 billion kilometers) in diameter. If Betelgeuse were to replace the sun at the center of the solar system, it would reach all the way to Jupiter. On the other hand, the star is no longer anywhere near as hot as it used to be.
What would Betelgeuse supernova look like in the sky?
Life on Earth will be unharmed. But that doesn't mean it will go unnoticed. Goldberg and Bauer found that when Betelgeuse explodes, it will shine as bright as the half-Moon — nine times fainter than the full Moon — for more than three months. “All this brightness would be concentrated into one point,” Howell says.
