Beltegeuse could become a supernova by February 21.
The star Betelgeuse will reveal likelihood to go supernova by Feb 21st
The star Betelgeuse will reveal likelihood to go supernova by Feb 21st
Six galaxies undergoing sudden, dramatic transitions
- Thread starter Persej
- Start date
Oh shoot! can we postpone it to the 22th, it's my wife birtday, what a great firework it would be.
Pearce
Jedi Master
I'm putting this here but I don't know if it belongs better elsewhere.
He talks about AD Leonis having a confirmed flare uptick
AD Leonis (Gliese 388) is a red dwarf star. It is located relatively near the Sun, at a distance of about 16 light years, in the constellation Leo. AD Leonis is a main sequence star with a spectral classification of M3.
And then there is this from intellihub, which, I still don't feel the best about that site. They are very sensationalist, but this could be something, it could be nothing.
Intense solar storms and space weather over the last week has revealed to researchers that some type of celestial object with a rather large mass may be approaching Planet Earth from the southerly rear side and is affecting how our planet is charging.
The C's did say the comet cluster would present as a solid body at first.
He talks about AD Leonis having a confirmed flare uptick
AD Leonis (Gliese 388) is a red dwarf star. It is located relatively near the Sun, at a distance of about 16 light years, in the constellation Leo. AD Leonis is a main sequence star with a spectral classification of M3.
And then there is this from intellihub, which, I still don't feel the best about that site. They are very sensationalist, but this could be something, it could be nothing.
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Intense solar storms and space weather over the last week has revealed to researchers that some type of celestial object with a rather large mass may be approaching Planet Earth from the southerly rear side and is affecting how our planet is charging.
The C's did say the comet cluster would present as a solid body at first.
Don Cesar
The Living Force
And they said also that the comet cluster come after the twin sun... So this large mass could be also this ?
tschai
Dagobah Resident
That was my thinking as well...be interesting to see if this is the caseAnd they said also that the comet cluster come after the twin sun... So this large mass could be also this ?
Pearce
Jedi Master
Could be, but I remember somewhere the C's saying the twin sun would only come as close as the orbit of Pluto, so it's hard to tell cause they don't say much in the article.And they said also that the comet cluster come after the twin sun... So this large mass could be also this ?
Don Cesar
The Living Force
Yes, and a nice astronomical phenonenon to awake people, i always love this idea
Don Cesar
The Living Force
We have to wait a bit to know the real nature of this large mass ...
Space Weather reports that a rare recurrent naked eye nova outburst has been spotted in Ophiuchus. It's thought to repeat every 20 years but the last time this happened was in 2006 so it's been just 15 years. Whilst it's apparently visible to the naked eye, they say that binoculars or a telescope would be best. Full article below.
Another recent article that may be of interest is the discovery of what is thought be the largest and furthest filament of gas in the Milky Way; they even speculate it may be part of a new arm. In the article they briefly explain that mapping the galaxy is difficult and that could be the reason why it's only just been discovered.
Some other interesting points from the article include:
- "The question about how such a huge filament is produced at the extreme galactic location remains open," [...]
- "it is puzzling that the structure does not fully follow the warp of the galactic disk."[...]
- it appears to lack a certain "wobbly" feature that other spiral arms of our galaxy exhibit (the traces of an ancient intergalactic collision).
Full article can be found here.
Rare recurrent nova outburst visible in constellation Ophiuchus
Space Weather
Tue, 10 Aug 2021 10:19 UTC
Recurrent nova RS Oph is in Outburst. The last large outburst of RS Oph occurred in Feb. 2006, when it reached visual mag 4.5.
RARE NAKED-EYE NOVA
Every 20 years or so, a thermonuclear explosion occurs on the surface of RS Oph, a white dwarf in the constellation Ophiuchus. This week it happened again. On Aug. 8th, the brightness of the tiny star increased 600-fold, from magnitude +12 to +5. Keith Geary of Ireland was the first to notice. Hours later, Italian astronomer Ernesto Guido and colleagues photographed the outburst using a remote-controlled telescope in Australia:
This is called a "recurrent nova," and it is rare. In the whole Milky Way galaxy, only 7 star systems are known to produce such explosions.
RS Oph is actually a binary star--a very lopsided one. On one side is a white dwarf, on the other is a red giant. There's very little distance between the two, so the gravity of the white dwarf is able to pull gaseous material off the larger star down onto itself. Every couple of decades, enough matter accumulates to trigger an explosion. The last time this happened was back in 2006.
At 5th magnitude, the current outburst is visible to the unaided eye, albeit just barely. Binoculars or a telescope will allow you to see it with ease. Look south after sunset. Ophiuchus hangs high in the sky just above the better known constellations Scorpius and Sagittarius.
Sky maps: simple, detailed, really detailed.
Update
Variable star observer Filipp Romanov of Yuzhno-Morskoy, Russia, has just seen RS Oph and estimates that its magnitude has increased further to +4.6.
© Filipp Romanov on August 10, 2021 @ Yuzhno-Morskoy (near Nakhodka), Russia
Recurrent nova RS Oph in outburst Taken. Details: I observed RS Oph with the naked eye and estimated: +4.6 mag. I took photos from my small homeland on August 9, 2021, from 15:19 to 15:22 UT. I have been waiting for several hours, and sky cleared for few minutes.
Another recent article that may be of interest is the discovery of what is thought be the largest and furthest filament of gas in the Milky Way; they even speculate it may be part of a new arm. In the article they briefly explain that mapping the galaxy is difficult and that could be the reason why it's only just been discovered.
Some other interesting points from the article include:
- "The question about how such a huge filament is produced at the extreme galactic location remains open," [...]
- "it is puzzling that the structure does not fully follow the warp of the galactic disk."[...]
- it appears to lack a certain "wobbly" feature that other spiral arms of our galaxy exhibit (the traces of an ancient intergalactic collision).
Full article can be found here.
Attachments
According to Betelgeuse tracker, the star is now at 120% of it's usual brightness:
Since i've been following the tracker, i don't remember it ever going that high (and judging by the data on the graph in the Tweet above, it hasn't), and just a few days ago i'm pretty sure it was at '80% of its usual brightness'.
I couldn't find any further verification online and so i guess we can keep an eye out for any news in the coming days/weeks to see if this is a new uptick in activity or not.
Since i've been following the tracker, i don't remember it ever going that high (and judging by the data on the graph in the Tweet above, it hasn't), and just a few days ago i'm pretty sure it was at '80% of its usual brightness'.
I couldn't find any further verification online and so i guess we can keep an eye out for any news in the coming days/weeks to see if this is a new uptick in activity or not.
NASA claims to have solved Betegeuse's dimming event; a gigantic Surface Mass Ejection that blasted off 400 billion times as much mass as a typical CME 
I missed this news, reported just 5 days ago, and i don't believe it has been posted on the forum yet. Also, over at the link there's a gif of the explosion images.
Previous posts about Betelgeuse can also be found in this thread: Six galaxies undergoing sudden, dramatic transitions
I missed this news, reported just 5 days ago, and i don't believe it has been posted on the forum yet. Also, over at the link there's a gif of the explosion images.
Betelgeuse blew its top in 'never seen before behavior of a normal star', NASA finds it 'bouncing' during its recovery
© Elizabeth Wheatley
Analyzing data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and several other observatories, astronomers have concluded that the bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse quite literally blew its top in 2019, losing a substantial part of its visible surface and producing a gigantic Surface Mass Ejection (SME). This is something never before seen in a normal star's behavior.
Our Sun routinely blows off parts of its tenuous outer atmosphere, the corona, in an event known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). But the Betelgeuse SME blasted off 400 billion times as much mass as a typical CME!
The monster star is still slowly recovering from this catastrophic upheaval. "Betelgeuse continues doing some very unusual things right now; the interior is sort of bouncing," said Andrea Dupree of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
These new observations yield clues as to how red stars lose mass late in their lives as their nuclear fusion furnaces burn out, before exploding as supernovae. The amount of mass loss significantly affects their fate. However, Betelgeuse's surprisingly petulant behavior is not evidence the star is about to blow up anytime soon. So the mass loss event is not necessarily the signal of an imminent explosion.
Dupree is now pulling together all the puzzle pieces of the star's petulant behavior before, after, and during the eruption into a coherent story of a never-before-seen titanic convulsion in an aging star.
This includes new spectroscopic and imaging data from the STELLA robotic observatory, the Fred L. Whipple Observatory's Tillinghast Reflector Echelle Spectrograph (TRES), NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft (STEREO-A), NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). Dupree emphasizes that the Hubble data was pivotal to helping sort out the mystery.
© NASA, ESA, Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI)
This illustration plots changes in the brightness of the red supergiant star Betelgeuse, following the titanic mass ejection of a large piece of its visible surface. The escaping material cooled to form a cloud of dust that temporarily made the star look dimmer, as seen from Earth. This unprecedented stellar convulsion disrupted the monster star's 400-day-long oscillation period that astronomers had measured for more than 200 years. The interior may now be jiggling like a plate of gelatin dessert.
"We've never before seen a huge mass ejection of the surface of a star. We are left with something going on that we don't completely understand. It's a totally new phenomenon that we can observe directly and resolve surface details with Hubble. We're watching stellar evolution in real time."
The titanic outburst in 2019 was possibly caused by a convective plume, more than a million miles across, bubbling up from deep inside the star. It produced shocks and pulsations that blasted off the chunk of the photosphere leaving the star with a large cool surface area under the dust cloud that was produced by the cooling piece of photosphere. Betelgeuse is now struggling to recover from this injury.
Weighing roughly several times as much as our Moon, the fractured piece of photosphere sped off into space and cooled to form a dust cloud that blocked light from the star as seen by Earth observers. The dimming, which began in late 2019 and lasted for a few months, was easily noticeable even by backyard observers watching the star change brightness. One of the brightest stars in the sky, Betelgeuse is easily found in the right shoulder of the constellation Orion.
Even more fantastic, the supergiant's 400-day pulsation rate is now gone, perhaps at least temporarily. For almost 200 years astronomers have measured this rhythm as evident in changes in Betelgeuse's brightness variations and surface motions. Its disruption attests to the ferocity of the blowout.
The star's interior convection cells, which drive the regular pulsation may be sloshing around like an imbalanced washing machine tub, Dupree suggests. TRES and Hubble spectra imply that the outer layers may be back to normal, but the surface is still bouncing like a plate of gelatin dessert as the photosphere rebuilds itself.
Though our Sun has coronal mass ejections that blow off small pieces of the outer atmosphere, astronomers have never witnessed such a large amount of a star's visible surface get blasted into space. Therefore, surface mass ejections and coronal mass ejections may be different events.
Betelgeuse is now so huge now that if it replaced the Sun at the center of our solar system, its outer surface would extend past the orbit of Jupiter. Dupree used Hubble to resolve hot spots on the star's surface in 1996. This was the first direct image of a star other than the Sun.
NASA's Webb Space Telescope may be able to detect the ejected material in infrared light as it continues moving away from the star.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.
Previous posts about Betelgeuse can also be found in this thread: Six galaxies undergoing sudden, dramatic transitions
