नवीनतम
Asteroid to eclipse blazing red supergiant star today
NEW DELHI [Maha Media]: Betelgeuse, a blazing red supergiant star with a distinctive orange-red hue, will be eclipsed by an asteroid in a rare celestial show on Monday night. Skywatchers worldwide will have the unique opportunity to witness this celestial spectacle as the asteroid Leona delicately aligns itself (a matter of perspective) with this ultra-bright stellar monster, creating a temporary eclipse.
The Virtual Telescope Project will bring this one-of-its-kind event live.
"This kind of occultation are very useful to constrain the shape of the asteroid involved. Here, we hope to even investigate the surface of the involved star, too: Betelgeuse. It is a large red supergiant and while Leona will move in front of it as seen from Earth, we will be hopefully able to learn more about its large convective cells, driving its variable brightness," says astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, Director of the Virtual Telescope Project, who will comment the event during the live feed.
Located in the iconic Orion constellation, Betelgeuse (also known as Alpha Orionis) is one of the largest stars ever discovered. Betelgeuse is about 7,500 to 14,000 times brighter than the Sun, making it easy to spot - it is often the tenth-brightest star in the sky. At roughly 10 million years old, the stellar giant is much younger than our nearly 5-billion-year-old Sun.
The red supergiant is about 700 times the size of the Sun and around 15 times more massive. For context, if we replaced our Sun with Betelgeuse, it would stretch past Jupiter's orbit.
According to NASA, Betelgeuse is destined for a supernova. However, scientists expect this stellar event will not unfold anytime soon - at least for about another 100,000 years, at which point Betelgeuse will become either a neutron star or a black hole. The star's final fate depends on how much material is left after the supernova event.
