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

British skies

While we're at it, here are some of the stars I grew up with, in the northern hemisphere sky. While it did rain just about every day I was in England, it nevertheless managed to clear up sometimes for spectacular starry night views.

 So here are the constellations of Perseus, Auriga, and Taurus, with its Pleiades and Hyades clusters. 

 Here are Cygnus, Lyra, and Cepheus, with the Milky Way running top to bottom.  


 




Cassiopeia, left of centre, Andromeda below it, and part of Pegasus. The Andromeda Galaxy is just visible as the faint, fuzzy patch at lower centre.

















A close up of part of Andromeda, with the galaxy easily visible.
 

I do like my northern hemisphere stars, even if our southern hemisphere ones are brighter and generally more spectacular.