A star runs out of juice? Explodes?

The bushfire smoke has pretty well cleared,  and sometimes we're even getting clear night skies. It was time to take a look at poor old Betelgeuse.



Betelgeuse, nowadays usually pronounced 'Beetle Juice' for some reason, is in trouble. It's well known to be a variable star, with its magnitude fluctuating typically between 0.0 and 1.3. It's an orange-red colour, and it's usually the second brightest star in Orion, the Hunter.

Top left is my picture from last night. Betelgeuse is not even a first magnitude star.

Here's a picture I took in March 2016. That's the Betelgeuse we knew and loved!

It's known that this sort of behaviour in a variable star can be indicative of an imminent supernova explosion. Watch out for this. It would be the brightest thing in the sky apart from the sun. It's fortunately about 700 light years distant. If it was one of the closer stars it could fry us along with all other life on the planet!

'Imminent' in this context means any time in the next 100,000 years, but you never know. It could be tomorrow! Here's a piece from Forbes magazine about a Betelgeuse explosion: Forbes Betelgeuse explosion article