The star that makes up one of his shoulders (can’t remember which one) is it good contender to go nova in the next 100 years (that is it probably went centuries ago, but we’ll see the light from it at some point in the next hundred years), so you never know, it might brighten things up for a bit.
Also I’m pretty sure it’s expected to collapse into a black hole as well which could be very interesting.
You might be thinking of Betelgeuse, the red supergiant, but that one isn’t expected to go supernova for 100,000 years.
Betelgeuse has evolved rapidly because of its large mass, and is expected to end its evolution with a supernova explosion, most likely within 100,000 years. When Betelgeuse explodes, it will shine as bright as the half-Moon for more than three months; life on Earth will be unharmed.
There was a period around a year ago for several months where we didn’t know what was going on with Betelgeuse dramatically dimming unexpectedly, and we thought it might go out within our lifetime. But yeah, we’ve explained that about 4 zeroes back since earlier this year I think.
The star that makes up one of his shoulders (can’t remember which one) is it good contender to go nova in the next 100 years (that is it probably went centuries ago, but we’ll see the light from it at some point in the next hundred years), so you never know, it might brighten things up for a bit.
Also I’m pretty sure it’s expected to collapse into a black hole as well which could be very interesting.
You might be thinking of Betelgeuse, the red supergiant, but that one isn’t expected to go supernova for 100,000 years.
There was a period around a year ago for several months where we didn’t know what was going on with Betelgeuse dramatically dimming unexpectedly, and we thought it might go out within our lifetime. But yeah, we’ve explained that about 4 zeroes back since earlier this year I think.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, they did mention the dimming. That would be an amazing sight to see a star as large as Betelgeuse going supernova though.