A photo from open sources
Perhaps in the near future all the inhabitants of planet Earth will become witnesses of a rare event that happens every few thousand years. According to insiders from the Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii, the red giant Betelgeuse is rapidly changing shape. For the last For 16 years, the star lost its round shape, rapidly shrinking into the poles while the star equator is still held thanks to centrifugal force. These are clear signs that weeks or months before a star turns into supernova.
A photo from open sources
Betelgeuse also known as Orion – one of the brightest stars the familiar constellation Orion (“hunter”). Like the names of many stars, Betelgeuse is of Arab origin. Title comes from the phrase “shoulder (or armpit) of the hunter” – the place that this star occupies in the drawings of the constellation Orion. Since the Betelgeuse star is massive red supergiant, then the end of her life is nearing and soon she explode like a supernova.
A photo from open sources
Betelgeuse is a red supergiant 600 miles away from us light years. Betelgeuse’s surface is colder than the surface of the Sun, and its size is 1000 times larger. If you put this star in the center The solar system, it will fill the space beyond the orbits of Jupiter. The picture shows a bright incomprehensible hot spot on the surface stars.
A photo from open sources
What will this rarest event from the earth look like? Suddenly in a very bright star flares up in the sky. “Very bright” means degree brightness equal to at least a full moon, at a maximum to a full moon the sun. A similar space show will last about six weeks, which means more than one and a half months of “white nights” in certain parts of the planet, other people will enjoy two or three extra hours of daylight and a delightful sight exploding star at night. Two to three weeks after the explosion, the star will begin to fade away, and in a few years – it will finally turn for an earth observer into a Crab-shaped nebula.
A photo from open sources
Well, the waves of charged particles after the explosion reach the Earth through several centuries, and the inhabitants of the Earth will receive a small (4-5 orders of magnitude less lethal) dose of ionizing radiation. But In any case, do not worry – as scientists say, threats for the Earth and its inhabitants, but a similar event in itself unique – the latest evidence of a supernova explosion at Earth dated 1054 year.
The word Betelgeuse is of Arab origin. History of him the origin is not completely clear, but all experts agree that the second part of the word “elgeise” comes from Arabic “al-jawza” (), that is how the whole constellation was called in antiquity Orion, this name was the heroine of one of the ancient Arab fairy tales. The root “JZ” in the word “jouse” means “in the middle”, so the image of “jouse” can be translated as “central.” Late word Al-Jawza used by Arab astronomers for a single designations of the constellations of Orion and Gemini. Even now when Orion in Arabic called “al-jabbar” (Giant), the old name sometimes continue to use. The most common explanation full name is the version of the incorrect translation from Arabic in Latin the words “poison-al-jawza” (the hand of al-jawza), that is, the name constellations of Orion. Europeans mixed up the Arabic letters Y and B, turning Yad-al-Jauza into Bait-al-Jauza (the house of jawza) or even Bat-al-Jauza (jawza armpit). So the word appeared that gave us Betelgeuse Betelgeuse today. Thus, it turns out that the most common interpretation of the name “twin arm” is not quite right. Most correct would be to translate the name as “hand what’s in the middle ”or“ the hand of the central. ”Also interesting An ancient Chinese version of the name Betelgeuse. In Chinese, he It looks like that and sounds like “Shen-xu-xi.” So this is not in Chinese no longer as “The Fourth Star of the Constellation of Three Stars.” Such the paradoxical name is due to the fact that initially in Chinese astronomy was the “constellation of three stars”, that is, the belt Orion, but subsequently carried several more nearby stars, but the name for the constellation remains the same …
A photo from open sources
Sun time
