If you haven't heard, Betelgeuse, a super red giant star about 700 light years from Earth, is dimming considerably. You can still see it easily with the naked eye, but over the last few months it has dimmed to only about one-third of its typical brightness. That's a big deal and left astronomers with many questions.
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| Betelgeuse - ALMA [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)] |
Betelgeuse is a super red giant star. This was a star that started out much more massive than the Sun and will end its life by exploding as a supernova. As a super red giant, Betelgeuse is beyond the main part of its life and nearing the end. This doesn't mean this dimming suggests the star is about to go supernova, but a supernova is coming soon, astronomically speaking, meaning sometime in the next several tens of thousand years to 100,000 years. In astronomy that is a short time period!
There are many unanswered questions in astronomy and seeing Betelgeuse dim and change in brightness provides more clues to understanding these very large stars near the end of their lives. Me, I'm really hoping Betelgeuse explodes as a supernova in my lifetime. This would be quite the sight in the sky and we'd still be safe. At 700 light years from us, Betelgeuse can explode as a supernova without harming life on Earth. Anything closer than 100 light years is trouble for life on Earth!
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