Where is beetlejuice the star

But what happened 18 months ago was out of the ordinary. The loss of brightness was far greater than anything previously recorded. It has the resolution to directly image the surface of Betelgeuse. The researchers compared pictures before, during and after the dimming, and did some modelling to see what kind of behaviour might give rise to the views obtained. Two ideas were dominant. Perhaps there was a large cool spot on the surface of the star, because red supergiants like Betelgeuse are known to have very large convective cells that can cause hot spots and cold spots.

Or maybe there was a cloud of dust forming right in front of the star as viewed from Earth. But then this condensation of dust would add to the rapid drop in brightness of the star. Betelgeuse is about times as massive as the Sun.

The unexplained dimming fuelled speculation that the star could be about to explode. This event would provide a spectacle the likes of which Earthlings have not seen in centuries: the last supernova in the Milky Way that could be observed from Earth was in , and Betelgeuse is so close to our planet that its supernova will be bright enough to be visible during daytime for weeks. The star is around parsecs light years away, according to the most current estimates 2.

But many astrophysicists warned that the supernova speculation was wishful thinking. Betelgeuse is more than 16 times the mass of the Sun, and times its width — so big that if it were located at the centre of the Solar System, it would engulf the orbits of all the planets up to Mars.

How to blow up a star. The images clearly showed that the bottom left-hand part of the star — as seen from Earth's Northern Hemisphere — had dimmed dramatically, and that the position of the darker region did not change substantially over the imaging period. This indicated that the dim spot was caused by a cloud of dust that had been spewed by the star itself, and was moving roughly in the direction of the line of sight, rather than passing by.

This enabled gas that the star had spewed out in the previous year to condense quickly into dust, blocking out light from the star. This scenario was the one that fit the data best, as the researchers confirmed by running more than 10, computer simulations. Nature , — Article Google Scholar. Joyce, M. If you swapped out the sun and replaced it with Betelgeuse , the red star would swallow Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, the asteroid belt, a couple of spacecraft, and maybe Jupiter; Saturn would suddenly be quite toasty.

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. Then, the star will fade from our sky. Instead, once astronomers see that Betelgeuse is going to go supernova, you should get to a clear northern sky as quickly as possible and enjoy the show.

In theory, all that ejected dust could shroud and darken the nearly dead star, causing it to dim from our perspective right before it goes supernova. Betelgeuse is classified as a semiregular variable star, meaning that its brightness semiregularly changes. Decades of photometric data show that Betelgeuse brightens and dims in cycles , with one notable cycle vacillating on a roughly six-year timescale, and another rising and falling every days or so. The reasons for these quasiperiodic changes in variations are somewhat unclear.

Guinan suspects that Betelgeuse is dramatically dimmer now because two of its cycles are overlapping at minimal brightness. Recent studies suggest that the star will most likely explode within the next million years, and perhaps as soon as , years from now. Or … maybe Betelgeuse has already exploded and we have not yet seen it happen. If we do see it detonate in our sky any time soon, that means the star actually blew up sometime during the European Middle Ages, and light from the blast is just reaching Earth.

Either way, scientists are excited to keep watch on Betelgeuse and see what sorts of surprises the star still has in store. All rights reserved. Share Tweet Email. Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants. This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city.