A blue supergiant star in relation to the size of our solar system

NASA ^

[LibWhacker]

Ah-ha! Here's something you can sink your teeth into!

[Slyfox]

Thanks.

[Slyfox]

What a pretty super-nova.

[Prospero]

Nicely hidden are we, on this sceptered Earth, circling a star invisible to the unaided human eye only fifty light years out.

That's one big blue mass of incandescent gas!

[LibWhacker]

There are supernovae, which are dangerous. Then there are gamma ray bursts, which are far more dangerous and could zap us from thousands of light years away. Every time a giant star collapses into a black hole (the collapse of all that matter into an infinitesimally small black hole happens in a matter of seconds), giant jets of high-energy gamma rays shoot out of its north and south poles. It looks something like this:

The jets are lethal at great distances, much greater than the radius of the danger zone around the supernova proper.

Watch this YouTube video. But don't worry about it; the good news is one of the jets has to score a direct hit on us to really hurt us, and that only happens once every few billion years.

[dsrtsage]

“just hope it is many thousands of light-years from us. don’t want to any where near that thing when it gives up the ghost.”

I hope you are not racistly implying that this gentle giant may be prone to violence in its future

[txnativegop]

Yes I am!