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Comet ISON

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What Will Happen When Betelgeuse Explodes?

“Every star will someday run out of fuel in its core, bringing an end to its run as natural source of nuclear fusion in the Universe. While stars like our Sun will fuse hydrogen into helium and then – swelling into a red giant – helium into carbon, there are other, more massive stars which can achieve hot enough temperatures to further fuse carbon into even heavier elements. Under those intense conditions, the star will swell into a red supergiant, destined for an eventual supernova after around 100,000 years or so. And the brightest red supergiant in our entire night sky? That’s Betelgeuse, which could go supernova at any time.”

One of the most sobering cosmic truths is that every star in the Universe will someday run out of fuel and die. Once its core fuel is exhausted, all it can do is contract under its own gravitational pull, fusing heavier and heavier elements until it can go no further. Only the most massive stars, capable of continuing to fuse carbon (and even heavier elements) will ever create the Universe’s ultimate cataclysmic event: a Type II, or core collapse, supernova. Stars that are fusing carbon (and up) appear to us today as red supergiants, and the brightest red supergiant as seen from Earth is Betelgeuse. Sometime in the next 100,000 years or so, Betelgeuse will go supernova. When it does, it will emit incredible amounts of radiation, become intrinsically brighter than a billion suns and and be easily visible from Earth during the day. But that’s not all.

What’s the full story on what will happen when Betelgeuse goes supernova? Come get the science today!

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Nebula Images: http://nebulaimages.com/

Astronomy articles: http://astronomyisawesome.com/

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VLT image of the cometary globule CG4

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Enceladus striated surface as seen by Cassini .

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The Calabash clash.

via reddit

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The Soul Nebula, IC 1848, 6500 light years distant and spanning 100 light years, is embedded with several small clusters of stars. Profuse emission from a spectral line of atomic hydrogen gives this nebula its red colour

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18420 second exposures stacked to give whirling effect

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IC 1805 & IC 1848 // Heart & Soul Nebulae (left)

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NGC 869 & NGC 884 // h & Chi Perseii // The Double Cluster (right)

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N159, an HII emitting nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud 180,000 light years from the Sun, as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope

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A multi-wavelength view of radio galaxy Hercules A

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Solar mass ejection on 2013/10/08

Image credit & copyright: Jose Cabello