Betelgeuse Supernova

[Spitfire of ATJ]

I did this a while back to illustrate it to a friend in an email.

[IMG][/IMG]

Too much?

[Confusious]

1. What's it suppose to do?

I always just say "If it went super in our lifetimes, every night would be a full moon or more for a month or so"

[Spitfire of ATJ]

4. That's about what I was going for.

It wouldn't be enough light to scatter in the atmosphere and make the sky blue but it would be enough to cast shadows and it would probably be enough to make you squint if you looked right at it.

[Systematic Chaos]

2. I heard if Betelgeuse went **BOOM** we would have some serious extra daylight for a while.

Your image is probably pretty accurate. Not sure though.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

7. Be glad we are out of range of VY Canis Majoris...

When that goes Hypernova it's going to collapse into a black hole and that will cause a massive blast of deadly gamma radiation for anything nearby. Fortunately we are 4,900 light years away.

[Stargazer09]

3. From what I've read,

It is supposed to be about as bright as a full moon, and I like how you illustrated that.

The only thing that I would change is to make the background stars close to the supernova much less visible. The light would completely hide those stars from our view (I think).

Thank you for sharing this!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

5. Actually, now that you mention it there would be one effect I didn't think of before...

The entire region of sky is really dense with interstellar gasses.

Betelgeuse is VERY distant behind all of that at approximately 640 light years away and when it blows all of those interstellar clouds are going to light up like a Christmas tree. It's going to be spectacular.

[Stargazer09]

6. I think you're right!

That will be awesome!

I'm looking forward to seeing your updated picture.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. Do you have any idea how hard it will be to map that?

It would be speculation only.

The best way of doing it would be to do a 3d rendering of the known cloud formations and throw the light behind it to see how it comes out. I guess I could start a search for archived NASA x-ray pictures to get an idea of the formations and densities.

At least then I could at least have something that isn't pure fantasy.

[Stargazer09]

12. Yes, I do

I didn't say you HAD to update your picture. It's really nice as it is now.

[Fumesucker]

11. That's going to happen over a period of time, we saw the effect with SN1987a

http://www.aao.gov.au/images/captions/aat066.html

When supernova 1987A was seen to explode in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Milky Way's nearest companion galaxy, the brilliant flash of light from the self-destructing star had taken about 170,000 years to arrive at the telescope. Some light was deflected by two sheets of dust near the supernova, and is seen after the star has faded away because the reflected light covers a longer path to reach us. The dust responsible for the rings seen here lies in two distinct sheets, about 470 and 1300 light years from the supernova, close to our line of sight to it.

The colour picture was made by photographically subtracting negative and positive images of plates of the region taken before and after the supernova appeared. The only major difference between them is the light echo itself. However, the bright stars do not cancel perfectly and appear black, while in other, bright parts of the image, the photographic noise does not cancel either. Despite this the image is an accurate reproduction of the colour of the extremely faint light echo, which in turn reflects the yellow colour of the supernova when it was at its brightest, in May, 1987

[Spitfire of ATJ]

13. That makes sense considering these clouds are light years across.

[Fumesucker]

15. Those light echoes are extremely faint

It took a fairly sophisticated image processing technique and a very large telescope to see them.

Since SN1987a is roughly 200 times further away than Betelgeuse then the echoes from it should be on the order of 400,000 times brighter but I suspect they will still be too dim by a substantial amount to see with the naked eye although they should be detectable with modest amateur equipment and a modern DSLR combined with similar image processing.

I was out trying to image Orionid meteors this morning, didn't get any meteors but I did get a nice shot of Orion and Betelgeuse, this is with my Canon S90 pocket camera on a tripod, 30 x 15 second exposures at f2.3 and ISO 400 aligned and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

16. Nice. You can see the Orion Nebula....

Ever zoom in under the first star in the belt to get the Horsehead Nebula?

[Fumesucker]

19. The Flame Nebula is just detectable on the full resolution pic, the Horsehead is too dim and small

Here's a full res crop.



If I had a motor drive mount and a lot darker skies I could probably do it with my little shirt pocket cam if I zoomed in a lot more, this was from wide angle shots looking for meteors.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

20. I've always loved Orion for it's easy to find targets.

[longship]

9. It would be visible during daylight, too.

And it could go any day now. (Of course, in cosmological terms, any day now means tomorrow or in a few million years.)

But Betelgeuse is one of the two big stars on the hit parade. The other is Eta Carinae, one of the most massive stars known in the galaxy. When it goes, it will light up the southern hemisphere skies. It will likely be a hypernova and a gamma ray burst.

Google "carina nebula" for an incredible Astro pic from the Hubble.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

10. "Google "carina nebula" for an incredible Astro pic from the Hubble."

Hell I'm using it for my skydome.

[IMG][/IMG]

A 360 animated view.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

14. Thought I'd share it in case others are on Linux...

This has been blended so there is no visible seam where the ends touch.

[IMG][/IMG]

[secondvariety]

17. May have already gone supernova

Cool picture.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

18. "May have already gone supernova"

Knowing my luck it'll be cloudy like today.