Just a Fainting Spell? Or Is Betelgeuse About to Blow?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/science/astronomy-supernova-betelgeuse.html
Source: By Dennis Overbye, The New York Times.
Excerpt: Is Betelgeuse about to blow? Probably not, but astronomers are having fun thinking about it. Over the last three months, the star, which marks the armpit of Orion the hunter, has mysteriously dimmed to less than half its normal brightness, markedly altering one of the great sights of the winter sky. At the beginning of January the star was fainter than ever before observed, according to Edward Guinan of Villanova University, who has been compiling data on Betelgeuse. In its “fainting” spell, Dr. Guinan said, the star has dropped from seventh to twenty-first on the list of brightest stars in the sky. ...All this has raised the issue of Betelgeuse’s mortality, and its cosmic endgame. ...That will be quite a show. Betelgeuse is only 700 light years from Earth, far enough to not kill us when it goes, but close enough to impress; the supernova would be as bright as a full moon in our sky. ...“My money all along has been that Betelgeuse is going through a somewhat extreme, but otherwise normal quasi-periodic change in brightness,” said J. Craig Wheeler, a supernova expert at the University of Texas in Austin.... See also Waiting for Betelgeuse to Explode [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/09/science/betelgeuse-supernova-fading.html]
Source: By Dennis Overbye, The New York Times.
Excerpt: Is Betelgeuse about to blow? Probably not, but astronomers are having fun thinking about it. Over the last three months, the star, which marks the armpit of Orion the hunter, has mysteriously dimmed to less than half its normal brightness, markedly altering one of the great sights of the winter sky. At the beginning of January the star was fainter than ever before observed, according to Edward Guinan of Villanova University, who has been compiling data on Betelgeuse. In its “fainting” spell, Dr. Guinan said, the star has dropped from seventh to twenty-first on the list of brightest stars in the sky. ...All this has raised the issue of Betelgeuse’s mortality, and its cosmic endgame. ...That will be quite a show. Betelgeuse is only 700 light years from Earth, far enough to not kill us when it goes, but close enough to impress; the supernova would be as bright as a full moon in our sky. ...“My money all along has been that Betelgeuse is going through a somewhat extreme, but otherwise normal quasi-periodic change in brightness,” said J. Craig Wheeler, a supernova expert at the University of Texas in Austin.... See also Waiting for Betelgeuse to Explode [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/09/science/betelgeuse-supernova-fading.html]