Saw Betelgeuse looking odd. Anyone else see this?

Last night (11/17/11) I was looking up at the sky at approximately 11:00 pm CST in Illinois, USA. I was struck by how luminous and clear the constellation of Orion appeared and paused to watch for a moment out of shear aesthetic appreciation. After a moment I noticed that Betelgeuse (the upper-left 'shoulder' of orion) (OUR left, that is) was both brighter than it usually appeared in my city and looked... odd. After a few moments of closer inspection I realized that the reason that it looked strange was that it seemed to be two points of light. That is, Betelgeuse appeared to be a binary star all of a sudden.

For those of you not up on your stellar neighborhood's major players, Betelgeuse is a staggeringly ginormous star known as a red giant, which, were it placed in the same position as that of our sun, would extend out past the orbit of Earth. It does NOT have a companion star that's visible from here.

Yet I was quite clearly seeing two lights there, aligned roughly parallel with the horizon. I looked at several of the brighter stars in the sky for comparison and saw nothing similar, yet, even after rubbing my eyes and trying hard to find any distortions in my visual field, any glance back at Betelgeuse showed the same double-pinprick effect. True, it was subtle, and someone without decent eyesight probably wouldn't notice, but I can clearly see one of polaris' companions and that's a much subtler feature of the sky than this was. (An ancient eyesight test of some Native American tribes was the ability to discern that Polaris was a double star, or so I have been led to believe. Could be urban legend.)

This wasn't a satellite (I know what those generally look like). This was not moving in relation to the stars over the course of the few minutes I watched. The two sources were of approximately the same magnitude and separated by, approximately, less than a degree. They seemed to be about the same color.

Now, I can theorize and speculate alongside the best of them. Mirage, thermal inversion causing a doubling effect, autosuggestion, alien spacecraft hiding in the starfield imperfectly, flying spaghetti monster throwing a rave, whatever. I'm frankly uninterested in people trying to explain (or explain away) my perceptions. Without evidence, I have no reason to grant more credence to any one explanation over any other.

What I AM interested in is, did anyone else see anything similar?

Thank you for your time.

reply to post by Stunspot


I did notice that he is chewing on a dog, but that is normal for him. And his hair is usually a mess...if it weren't, then I would be worried.

reply to post by Stunspot

What I AM interested in is, did anyone else see anything similar?

Nope, wasn't looking but I will be tonight.

Thanks for the heads up!

reply to post by Stunspot


Keep watching, because it is supposed to go SuperNova during our lifetime. I'm sure there are ATS threads, and a google search will find it, but a lot of astronomers think we will get to see Betelgeuse go boom very soon.

Here's a Large discussion on it.

No, I didn't notice it last night.

Maybe this is why:

There is even evidence of stellar companions orbiting within this gaseous envelope, possibly contributing to the star's eccentric behavior.

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Stunspot


i thought you were talking about the movie for a moment!!!
you seem to be more learned than myself on these matters,but was it cold outside when you were stargazing?
sometimes the cold air 'amplifies' how the stars look.
it has the same effect on sound as well. on a cold night,you can hear things much farther away than you can on a hot summer night
just a thought. and no i couldn't see it cause it was snowing here!

reply to post by Stunspot


I live in eastern Canada and last night my 8 year old son was all excited he found Orion all by himself. "Look how bright it looks " he said. So I took a peak and I was amazed on how bright it actualy was. I do live in the country and there isn't much light polution around our parts so clear nights are really clear and I didn't notice Betelgus. I did notice somekind of "nebula" or star cluster at 6 o'clock from Orions Belt....ok that sound abit strange but no punn intended. Maybe it was always there but never noticed. But I did find it abit odd.

As far as I am aware, there is some issue of a nebulae surrounding Betelgeuse...it is extremely variable in nature...

By the way, have you ever noticed any planes overhead at night? If so, have you ever seen what I like to refer to as the Christmas Tree effect (i.e., looks like multiple colored lights hanging from the bottom of the plane)? If so, that is what you call the effect of inversion on the object being viewed...

reply to post by Stunspot


I didn't see it last night but I plan on taking the telescope out tonight (if the clouds don't get worse).

It's a 12" Dobsonian so I should be able to get a really nice view of the star.

I noticed it doesn't look as red as usual and perhaps a tiny bit brighter. That's about it.

ETA: I also thought about it to myself on the same date you claim to have observed something. Very strange.

i live in Australia so Orions belt doesn't rise until after midnight, my girlfriend went outside at 3:00am in the morning the other night and noticed that beetleguise was looking very different then usual so maybe it might go supernova soon.

Betelgeuse (officially known as Alpha Orionis) is one of the largest and most luminous stars known to Man. It is a red supergiant one thousand times bigger than our Sun (it was the first star after our Sun to have its angular diameter measured) and is the eighth brightest star in the night sky. If it were at the centre of our Solar System, its surface would extend past the asteroid belt to the orbit of Jupiter and beyond, wholly engulfing Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars! It is 640 light years away from Earth.

However, Betelgeuse is already old for its class of star and is expected to explode in a supernova relatively soon for a star its age. However, nobody knows just when it will go supernova. It could happen in half an hour's time, but could also happen a million years from now. However, when it does go supernova we'll know about it. At its current distance from Earth (640 light years, relatively close), such a supernova explosion would be the brightest ever recorded, outshining even the Moon in the night sky and becoming easily visible in broad daylight. However, we will only see the supernova occurring 640 years after it actually occurred so, for all we know, Betelgeuse may not exist now because it may have exploded in a supernova centuries ago.

Maybe the brightening of the star which has supposedly been witnessed by Stunspot may be evidence that it is about to go supernova.

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by reficul


You said snow so I checked your location which you show as Hades.
So tell me ... Is hell about to freeze over ?
Cuz if so a lot of improbable things could start happening. You know the ones that will happen when hell freezes over.

As Betelgeuse is ~ 650 light years away, it may well have gone nova centuries ago,
the light just hasn't arrived here yet.

I did not notice exactly what you did but I can say just about four days I went for a walk late night and noticed how the stars/constellations were very bright,almost seemed closer to earth from my perspective.
It was a sight to see,never remember seeing the stars so prominent in the night sky as of lately where I am.

I didn't see the same thing, but funnily enough I was convinced I was watching a UFO around the same date, that kept moving around. But it was only when I realized it was Betelgeuse rising in the East that it must have been my eyes playing tricks. But that's the first time B has ever played tricks on my eyes, first time I've properly thought about B in a long while too. And you have an observation from around the same time.

With that in mind, certain things have happened for a reason to me lately. I doubt a red dwarf is trying to get my, yours and other peoples attention before it goes super nova, but it's certainly a fun thought. Orion is such an awesome constellation!