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If Betelgeuse were too close to Earth, the eventual supernova could cause an extinction here on Earth. However, even at 530 light-years distance, our planet will still be safe from the eventual ...
Type Ia supernova progenitors are white dwarf stars that are close to the Chandrasekhar limit of about 1.44 solar masses and are accreting matter from a binary companion star. The list includes massive Wolf–Rayet stars , which may become Type Ib/Ic supernovae , particularly oxygen-sequence (Wolf-Rayet WO) stars.
Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars in the sky in the constellation Orion, has long puzzled astronomers due to its history of dimming and brightening, sometimes unexpectedly.
However, the first dredge-up occurs soon after a star reaches the red supergiant phase and so this only means that Betelgeuse has been a red supergiant for at least a few thousand years. The best prediction is that Betelgeuse has already spent around 40,000 years as a red supergiant, [18] having left the main sequence perhaps one million years ago.
Models indicate that even rapidly rotating main-sequence stars should be braked by their mass loss so that red supergiants hardly rotate at all. Those red supergiants such as Betelgeuse that do have modest rates of rotation may have acquired it after reaching the red supergiant stage, perhaps through binary interaction. The cores of red ...
As Betelgeuse burns through fuel in its core, it has swollen to massive proportions, becoming a red supergiant, the latter phase of giant stars. When the star explodes, the event could be briefly ...
These parameters are all consistent with those estimated for Betelgeuse. [11] The initial mass of Mu Cephei has been estimated from its position relative to theoretical stellar evolutionary tracks to be between 15 M ☉ and 25 M ☉. [11] [15] The star currently has a mass loss rate of (4.9 ± 1.0) × 10 −7 M ☉ per year. [11]
Bellatrix is the third-brightest star in the constellation of Orion, positioned 5° west of the red supergiant Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis). It has the Bayer designation γ Orionis, which is Latinized to Gamma Orionis. With a slightly variable magnitude of around 1.6, it is typically the 25th-brightest star in the night sky.