Will Betelgeuse, the bright red giant star, blow up in your lifetime?
- June 13, 2023
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Will Betelgeuse, the bright red giant star, blow up in your lifetime?
Subject : Science and technology
Section: Space technology
Concept :
- By examining Betelgeuse’s pulsation, researchers from Japan and Switzerland recently reported that the star is in its late carbon-burning stage.
About Betelgeuse
- Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star and one of the largest visible to the naked eye.
- The bright red star Betelgeuse, called ‘Thiruvathirai’ or ‘Ardra’ in Indian astronomy, is easily spotted in the constellation Orion.
- In 1920, Betelgeuse became the first extrasolar star whose photosphere’s angular size was measured.
- Starting in October 2019, Betelgeuse began to dim noticeably but then returned to a more normal brightness range in April 2023.
- Infrared suggest that the dimming was due to a change in extinction around the star rather than a more fundamental change.
- A study using the Hubble Space Telescope suggests that occluding dust was created by a surface mass ejection.
What is carbon burning stage?
- Carbon burning is the stage at which a star fuses carbon inside its core, making heavier elements such as neon and magnesium.
- Carbon burning eventually occurs in all stars that start out with more than about eight solar masses.
- By examining its pulsation (the periodic contraction and expansion of the star) researchers from Japan and Switzerland recently reported that the star is in its late carbon-burning stage.
- In massive stars like Betelgeuse, the carbon-burning stage lasts only up to a few hundreds of years, after which the star ‘dies’ and collapses into a supernova within a few months.