Then write that number down and return every few nights or maybe every week and make another estimate. Betelgeuse is expected to continue fading into January and then re-brighten, but you never know what surprises may still be in store.
Stars do as they please and that's half the fun. If a ori erupts I have saved my glases from the great american eclipse -: I logged Betelgeuse at mag 1,2 last night. Happy New year to you all. Log in to Reply. As bright as a SN that close might be, I don't really think you'd need eclipse glasses to look at it since, unlike our much closer sun, it'll still be a starlike body i.
Nonetheless I bet it'd - just like the full moon - still hurt the eye to look at it at night time. But I personally would still do at home what I do for observing the moon comfortably - no filters on: switch on the porch lights! This way my pupils don't get as dilated as they would in complete darkness and I can stand observing it through the eyepiece fof hours on end.
Bob King Post Author. Photon, It would be a starlike point and you wouldn't need eclipse glasses. It sure would a bright point though! Half-moon or better like a super version of an Iridium satellite flare that would last much longer. I think looking at a supernova Betelgeuse through binoculars or even low power telescope magnification would be painful, just as looking at the full moon through 10x50 binoculars is. So with a strong enough light-gathering instrument, you perhaps could damage your vision peeking at such an explosion.
Hi Jakob, You won't need it. It would be OK to just look up at Betelgeuse. It would appear as a brilliant point of light. At Lu away there's about a 1 in 15 chance that Betelgeuse has already gone nova. Stub, can we hear the assumptions you've made and the math you used to come up with the odds you've stated?
Based on the numbers given, I think the odds you've given are too high by at least a factor of ten. On the other hand, it could blow up tomorrow Yes you are right, for some reason I used 10, not , when doing my approximation. Stub, Corey is correct. We don't know enough. Also, to be clear, Betelgeuse will not become supernova rather than a nova.
Novae happen differently and involve close binary star systems. Instead, Betelgeuse will explode on its own as a supernova. If its drop in brightness is due to a decreasing surface area then, by the natural gas law we all learned in high school chemistry, it should also be getting hotter and bluer. It was a weird being so dim, and b only a little brighter than Bellatrix, but distinctly so. I suppose that put it at 1.
It also didn't seem as colorful and red as usual but this could partly be due to its dimness. Cepheids are a class of periodically variable stars that have evolved off the main sequence of the H-R diagram and are on their way to becoming red giants.
A Type I Cepheid has a mass of only a couple of times that of the Sun. Both types are burning helium at their cores or are about to begin doing so , having depleted their primordial hydrogen. Both types are moving through a region of the H-R diagram known as the Cepheid instability strip.
It has more than 10 times the mass of the Sun, and has evolved far past the point of burning He, through successive eras of burning heavier and heavier elements, and is about to run out of fuel for further fission. When it does so, it will become a supernova. Hi M-B, Yes, the swings in brightness coincide with color and temperature changes but they are not so extreme as to turn the star blue.
Howard addressed the Cepheid vs. Betelgeuse difference. Betelegeuse is a supergiant at a different stage in its evolution. Its variability is far more irregular than the more clock-like Cepheids.
All this sounds great. Newbie in Vegas would appreciate your help. Looking for my first telescope. Would like to view the surrounding mountains in close detail during the day, and check out Orion at night. Hi Max, There are several options depending on your needs now and in the future. A spotting scope provides correct, right-side-up images. My quote is here. Why is that? There is no guarantee that data will be available even DR4. The article says: "In addition, there are many very bright stars of particular interest and Gaia data may help us to refine our knowledge of their properties.
This paper is , so there might be more results unbeknown to me. This problem could easily be solved by placing two radiotelescopes in orbit around the sun for the sake of interferometery, and the size of the arpeture! We places one telescope one quarter ahead of the Earth, the other satellite one quarter ahead of the Earth, in it's orbit, then triangulate!
Save Dark Skies. By: Diana Hannikainen November 11, By: Bob King November 10, By: Camille M. Carlisle November 9, This Week's Sky At a Glance. By: Alan MacRobert November 5, Astronomy and Society. By: David Dickinson November 4, By: Jure Japelj November 3, By: Monica Young November 3, Solar System. By: Monica Young November 1, Constant Contact Use.
Emails are serviced by Constant Contact. Tags Betelgeuse. Comments Andrew James November 6, at pm There is an important point missing here. Peter Wilson November 9, at pm Radii for Betelgeuse may also be diffuse. Log in to Reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Andrew James November 9, at pm Nicely put. Tsagar April 9, at pm Pardon my naivete but I do have a doubt. Rod November 7, at am Very interesting report. Alan Potts November 8, at am Excellent article Monica.
Alan Potts November 8, at am Or, alternatively, the vaporized planet's remains could presently be at a significantly greater distance, having been pushed back by the radiation pressure since the time of vaporization and subsequent dust formation. Alan Potts November 10, at am Sorry, but my hypothesis is that the remnants of a vaporized planet, not a standard planet produced the dimming dust. Andrew James November 10, at pm There is no evidence for this.
My comments and this story are towards the star's size not about recent dimming. John-Murrell November 10, at am Apparently Gaia should be able to measure the parallax for Betelgeuse using a 'special mode'. Andrew James November 10, at pm GAIA will not improve the problem of radius nor distance, as the parallax of c. John-Murrell November 13, at pm Andrew, my information that the parallax could be measured by Gaia comes from quite close to the senior scientists for the Gaia mission.
Andrew James November 13, at pm My quote is here. By mid-May, it can be glimpsed briefly in the west after sunset. Betelgeuse may lie as close as light-years from Earth although some estimates place it farther away; determining distances to red supergiant stars such as Betelgeuse is a vexing problem in astronomy. The mass that makes up galaxies is recycled as stars are formed and destroyed, and red supergiants are major contributors, yet the process by which mass is lost remains a mystery.
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