Betelgeuse going supernova?

Question to all of you astronomers. How exactly can scientists predict that Betelgeuse will go supernova this year, giving the appearance of a second sun?

They dont know...and they never said this year. They said it could go anytime from today up until 1 billion years.

They know its in the final stage of its life by the radiation its emitting and the fact its a red supergiant.

reply to post by thorazineshuffle


By monitoring the soun and radiation that would come off of it from a past blast. The radiation would be followed by the visual explosion. So if radiation is detected more comming in then it could be sign of star explode in past in the near by vicinity.

My guess.

reply to post by thorazineshuffle

Question to all of you astronomers. How exactly can scientists predict that Betelgeuse will go supernova this year, giving the appearance of a second sun?

Answer: no astronomer is predicting that Betelgeuse will go supernova this year. They are predicting that Betelgeuse will eventually go supernova. No-one knows when. (The prediction is based on the current understanding of stars' life cycle.)

Edit to add: More information here: Astronomy Today.

reply to post by Ophiuchus 13

By monitoring the soun and radiation that would come off of it from a past blast. The radiation would be followed by the visual explosion. So if radiation is detected more comming in then it could be sign of star explode in past in the near by vicinity.

My guess.

Just the opposite, actually. Light is radiation; the visible light would arrive at the same time as the potentially lethal gamma and x-radiation. This would be followed centuries later by particle radiation which, technically. would have acoustical energy... though it would be too rarified to "hear."

reply to post by DJW001


Thanks I knew it went something like that. Always learning!

For those of you who smell a rat with this story, it's a cover up of what they are predicting to appear in our skies in the near future. To even mention that star going super nova now makes little to no sense if it can blow up from now to 1 billion yrs from now, absolutely absurd to even mention it now.
I really don't want to jump on the Nibiru bandwagon like the fanatics, but time after time NASA and the science community seem to validate this planet X BS with hokie stories like this. That star is in Orion, and so far away from us, to suggest it will appear to be a 2nd sun in OUR skies is ridiculous beyond comparison to any other anomaly we've seen in the night skies. If that star grew to the size they suggest it will during it's final days, it should appear no brighter than Jupiter does to us at it's brightest, period.

Now go drink some of Michu Kaku's kool aid and take a nap on it.

I don't know about it's distance, but the way I understand it is it could have gone supernova already as far as we know. It maybe will be unable to be "viewed" until sometime in the near future or maybe distant future depending on how far that light has to travel in relation to Earth. What we see is the distant past of the star, not it's present situation. Unless we sent a satellite telescope in betelguese's orbit.

Originally posted by thorazineshuffle
Question to all of you astronomers. How exactly can scientists predict that Betelgeuse will go supernova this year, giving the appearance of a second sun?

I'm no astronomer, but I do recall the story.
They speculate it could go anytime, from now onwards. This doesn't mean it will in our lifetime of course and, we have to remember that scientists get things wrong all the time.
Will see it or not?
Well, one has to be aware of the size of Betelgeuse - it's actually so large, it could easily fit our entire Solar System inside it!
So there is every chance we would indeed see a very large, bright star in our skies when it goes supernova.
As for the brightness being so bright as to be a "second Sun", I'm not so sure about that.
Be interesting to find out - I hope it happens soon!

I was going to say it could have happened already? How far away is this star? Wouldn't it take forever for the light or explosion to be seen?

Originally posted by loves a conspiricy
They dont know...and they never said this year. They said it could go anytime from today up until 1 billion years.

They know its in the final stage of its life by the radiation its emitting and the fact its a red supergiant.

edit on 22-3-2011 by loves a conspiricy because: (no reason given)

Not a billion, more like a million. But I think many suspect its remaining life expectancy is probably best measured in the tens or hundreds or thousands of years.

The star is very much on its last legs in stellar terms, but stellar terms (like geological terms) is measured in time-spans that are much longer than a human lifetime.

Originally posted by Slipdig1
I was going to say it could have happened already? How far away is this star? Wouldn't it take forever for the light or explosion to be seen?

Yes, it could have happened already. Betelgeuse is about 500 or 600 light years away, so if we see it go supernova tonight, that means it exploded back in the 1400 or 1500's and we are only seeing it now. It might well be centuries gone, only the light of that event hasn't reached us yet.

Originally posted by LifeInDeath

Originally posted by Slipdig1
I was going to say it could have happened already? How far away is this star? Wouldn't it take forever for the light or explosion to be seen?

Yes, it could have happened already. Betelgeuse is about 500 or 600 light years away, so if we see it go supernova tonight, that means it exploded back in the 1400 or 1500's and we are only seeing it now. It might well be centuries gone, only the light of that event hasn't reached us yet.

I was just about to say that according to WIKI :

Betelgeuse is currently thought to lie around 640 light years away, yielding a mean absolute magnitude of about −6.05.

source

So it in fact could have happened already, because it would take 640 years to reach earth right?

Originally posted by OptimisticPessimist
Well, one has to be aware of the size of Betelgeuse - it's actually so large, it could easily fit our entire Solar System inside it!
So there is every chance we would indeed see a very large, bright star in our skies when it goes supernova.
As for the brightness being so bright as to be a "second Sun", I'm not so sure about that.
Be interesting to find out - I hope it happens soon!

It's not as large as our whole solar system, it is probably about 3.6 AU or "Astronomical Units" in radius, though some say it's less. An Astronomical Unit is the distance from the Sun to the Earth, so if you go by the 3.6 AU measurement and plopped Betelgeuse into our own solar system, it would reach out to a point between Mars and Jupiter...pretty darn huge!

When it explodes it will appear in our sky to be brighter than the Full Moon, so that is very, very bright. Not quite a second sun, but still an impressive show that will last for some months.

Betelgeuse is currently 640 light-years away in the constellation of Orion.

So if it had gone super nova 640 years ago we should see it soon, or it's sill good but who knows whats going on.

With all of this gravitational lensing going on we don't know, if it's even there.

reply to post by thorazineshuffle



For all we know it could have went already.. Science still does not have an accureate distance established, guessing anywhere from 180 to 1,300 light years away, meaning it could possibly take anywhere from 180 to 1,300 years for light to reach the earth. What we are seeing now is 180 to 1300 years in the past.

there considering betelgeuse the same as eta carinae where it could go supernova anytime from today to billions of years from now, or for all we know it already could have but the light from the supernova just hasnt reached us yet

Originally posted by caf1550
there considering betelgeuse the same as eta carinae where it could go supernova anytime from today to billions of years from now, or for all we know it already could have but the light from the supernova just hasnt reached us yet

Eta Carinae won't last billions of years. It is a super massive star, which at most last only a few million years from their birth to when they go supernova. Stars this massive burn hotter and faster than all others, expending their fuel in a matter of a few million years.

reply to post by LifeInDeath


ment to type millions not billions but thank you though

The big red one is going to gone soon, Of that we are all agreed.

Do any of you very bright sparks out there know if there are any others that are going to go off soon?