Betelgeuse Is Destined to Explode as a Supernova…But When?

Long considered one of the brightest stars in the night sky, Betelgeuse has begun to dramatically fade then brighten again for reasons we can’t quite pin down. And it’s caused some people to wonder if it's about to explode. » Catch up on Constellations! https://bit.ly/3uKysSS » Subscribe to Seeker! http://bit.ly/subscribeseeker » Visit our shop at http://shop.seeker.com Long description: Despite being roughly 643 light years away, Betelguese is nearly impossible to miss. For starters, it’s MASSIVE; so big that if it were at the center of our Solar System, it would engulf all the planets up to Jupiter. Its diameter is roughly 1,000 times that of our Sun! To find it, just look at the Orion constellation. If Orion is “The Hunter” with his iconic three-star belt, then Betelguese is the hunter’s left shoulder. If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere during the first few days of January, you can see Betelguese rising in the east just after sunset. All other times, this star is easy to spot no matter where you’re located in the world! Especially September through March. Some of the earliest known records of Betelguese come from China in the 1st century BCE. These records describe Betelgeuse as being yellow… which is strange, because just a few years later, in 150 CE, the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy described Betelguese as red. This indicates that Betelguse rapidly underwent a stellar phase change sometime between the time these two records were made, evolving to become the red giant that it is today. Betelguese’s propensity for fading and brightening over a multi-year cycle also seems to have caught people’s attention. In western Aboriginal Australian oral tradition, Betelguese represents the ‘fire magic’ used by a love-struck hunter to reach the object of his affection. Unfortunately, the fire magic’s tendency to flicker out ultimately causes him to fail. While Sir John Herschel continues to be recognized as the first to notice Betelguese’s variable brightness, it’s c