Why does betelgeuse flicker

See how many constellations you can identify with our interactive quiz. Huge, red stars like Betelgeuse live fast and die violently, exploding in stellar events called supernovae that are visible across vast distances. So, while Betelgeuse is a relatively young star— only about 8.

If you swapped out the sun and replaced it with Betelgeuse , the red star would swallow Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, the asteroid belt, a couple of spacecraft, and maybe Jupiter; Saturn would suddenly be quite toasty. So, when this star detonates, the explosion will be bright enough to cast shadows on Earth at night and will be visible during the day for a few months, at least. Then, the star will fade from our sky.

Instead, once astronomers see that Betelgeuse is going to go supernova, you should get to a clear northern sky as quickly as possible and enjoy the show. In theory, all that ejected dust could shroud and darken the nearly dead star, causing it to dim from our perspective right before it goes supernova. Betelgeuse is classified as a semiregular variable star, meaning that its brightness semiregularly changes.

Decades of photometric data show that Betelgeuse brightens and dims in cycles , with one notable cycle vacillating on a roughly six-year timescale, and another rising and falling every days or so.

The reasons for these quasiperiodic changes in variations are somewhat unclear. Guinan suspects that Betelgeuse is dramatically dimmer now because two of its cycles are overlapping at minimal brightness. Recent studies suggest that the star will most likely explode within the next million years, and perhaps as soon as , years from now.

Astronomers can also use telescopes equipped with a technology called adaptive optics. Adaptive optics detects the atmospheric disturbance and corrects the telescope image with a deformable mirror to provide a clearer picture of the star. Serm Murmson is a writer, thinker, musician and many other things. He has a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago. His concerns include such things as categories, language, descriptions, representation, criticism and labor.

He has been writing professionally since What Covers the Moon at Night. What Do Stars Look Like? What Astronomical Instrument Measures the Brightness How Does a Spectrometer Work? The Color of a Black Hole. And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community space. View Deal. Samantha Mathewson. See all comments 1. Admin said:. The most recent nearby supernova appeared long before people could panic about it on Twitter, in , but it could be seen only in very dark parts of the Southern Hemisphere, far from artificial lights.

Other examples are found even deeper in history, in and Betelgeuse would provide a far better show; the other stars were thousands of light-years from Earth, rather than hundreds. The question is, of course, when. The star might explode tomorrow or in , years, says Stella Kafka, the executive director of the American Association of Variable Star Observers and an astronomer who studies Betelgeuse and similar twinkling stars.

Read: The mysterious exploding asteroid. While a Betelgeuse supernova would eventually fade, its mark on the planet would remain, and not just within the ether of the internet. When stars explode, they release a cascade of newly forged elements into space. These elements glide across the universe inside particles of dust, settling on whatever they encounter. Astronomers have detected this stardust all over Earth , inside mud on the ocean floor and snow in Antarctica.

It is these explosions and the cosmic droplets they unleashed that helped give rise, over eons, to other stars, planets, and, in our case, life.