December 27th, 2019 • 10 mins 11 secs • Download (9.33 MB) • Link with Timestamp
Over the last weekend, astronomy Twitter started noting that the red giant Betelgeuse, the prominent shoulder of Orion was looking visibly dimmer in the sky, and I had a few people reach out to me and ask me if it was really happening and if I knew what was going on.
This is exciting, of course, because Betelgeuse is living on borrowed time, and it could explode as a supernova any day now. Or, it might not detonate for another 100,000 years. We just don’t know.
What’s Betelgeuse up to? Is this a sign that it’s about to explode? And what would it mean if it did?