Free Republic

Days before one of the researchers’ wedding, a star explodes in a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.A team of Israeli scientists managed to capture and study a once-in-a-lifetime supernova using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, helping mankind better understand this magnificent event. Supernovas, or exploding stars, are phenomenons that occur in our galaxy about once every century, with the last observable explosion taking place hundreds of years ago. Supernovas can’t be predicted, and instead astrophysicists study their aftermath in a way reminiscent of space archaeology. But the researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science learned about the supernova as it was taking place on...

“It’s burning helium in its core at the moment, which means it’s nowhere near exploding,” Dr. Joyce said. “We could be looking at around 100,000 years before an explosion happens.” Co-author Dr. László Molnár from the Konkoly Observatory?in Budapest says the study also revealed how big Betelgeuse is, and its distance from Earth. “The actual physical size of Betelgeuse has been a bit of a mystery — earlier studies suggested it could be bigger than the orbit of Jupiter. Our results say Betelgeuse only extends out to two thirds of that, with a radius 750 times the radius of the...

Some huge, some small. Some zip, some crawl. The cosmos is full of objects that defy expectations.... The biggest: UY Scuti Just like in the DC Universe, sometimes the clearest way for astronomers to express something is truly extraordinary is to add the prefix super. It’s the case with Superman, as well as with supergiant stars — a fitting category for the largest known star in the universe, UY Scuti. One day, the Sun will become a red giant. But if it had started its life with a dozen or so times its current mass, it could have eventually evolved...

Question: If Betelgeuse explodes right now, could we see it with naked eye? It is over 400 light years away, so you might think that people would see it long after it actually happens? Betelgeuse is already one of the brightest stars in the night sky, sitting somewhere around the 8th or 9th brightest star in the night sky. (These lists don’t include the Sun, which is somewhat obviously always the brightest object in the sky.) It sits in the constellation Orion, along with a number of other bright stars, and makes up the left hand shoulder of the warrior....