Betelgeuse brightness

[John Fitzgerald]

I estimated Betelgeuse tonight 12/24/19 to be very slightly fainter than Pollux, at 1.14, so about 1.2 to 1.25. Definitely brighter than Bellatrix.

[smp]

I found that two Astronomer's Telegrams have been issued on Betelgeuse recently:

"The Fainting of the Nearby Red Supergiant Betelgeuse"
http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=13341

"Updates on the "Fainting" of Betelgeuse"
http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=13365

smp

[sdbodin]

Stuck my head out hoping for clear skies, but skunked again. However, did spy Betelgeuse between clouds and estimate the brightness same as Bellatrix. Color seems faded, but on the warm side as opposed to blue for Bellatrix.

Stay tuned,
Steve

[SKEtrip]

I found that two Astronomer's Telegrams have been issued on Betelgeuse recently:

"The Fainting of the Nearby Red Supergiant Betelgeuse"
http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=13341

"Updates on the "Fainting" of Betelgeuse"
http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=13365

smp

Thanks!

[SKEtrip]

They had one of the NASA "Ambassadors" on local TV this AM - she made it sound like it is going to go sooner rather than later.
Has to be true, she had a lab coat on....

[helicon]

Stories about Betelgeuse have been proliferating both in the print media and the Interwebs. Can't fire up Facebook without seeing many articles about it.

[smp]

An article from NYTimes.com:
"Just a Fainting Spell? Or Is Betelgeuse About to Blow?"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/scie ... on=Science

I'm not enthusiastic about the "...Or About to Blow?" but the article contains a nice chart showing the recent dimming.
Argh. It appears that you may get a look at it or you may not. Some sort of you-get-a-peek-then-you-get-blocked action for me.

smp

[smp]

The Astronomer's Telegram of 21 January 2020 provides this update:

http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=13410

smp

[SKEtrip]

The Astronomer's Telegram of 21 January 2020 provides this update:

http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=13410

smp

Thanks for the update
Do you know where we could find a graph plotting the changes in magnitude?

[OzEclipse]

We've had weeks of thick bushfire smoke obscuring the sky.
Even the full Moon at zenith was very faint, no stars. On Monday
we had a supercell come through with high winds driving tennis ball
sized hailstones and heavy rain. My car is a write off along with 19000 other cars in town.

The one silver lining is that it did finally clear the air, so I got my first
clear look at Orion last night since I first heard about this fainting .

Remarkable sight to see an old friend so obviously fainter.

Joe

[smp]

Here's a new article from Sky & Telescope:
"The Latest on Betelgeuse, Plus a Bright Supernova and New Comet Iwamoto"

https://www.skyandtelescope.com/observi ... t-iwamoto/

smp

[Pikaia]

The AAVSO has recent observations:-

https://www.aavso.org/LCGv2/

[SKEtrip]

Here's a new article from Sky & Telescope:
"The Latest on Betelgeuse, Plus a Bright Supernova and New Comet Iwamoto"

https://www.skyandtelescope.com/observi ... t-iwamoto/

smp

The AAVSO has recent observations:-

https://www.aavso.org/LCGv2/

Thank you for the links!

[Harshil]

http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=13439

[pakarinen]

No blow yet, but it did look noticeably dimmer to me last night. Quite possible there were some high cirrus clouds though - sky clouded over pretty quickly around 20:00.

[Damien75]

I was under the impression that this was still thousands of years from going?

Also it is a safe distance from earth. Which always confused me, if this is one of the possibilities of being the biggest supernova ever, how are they able to safe we are at a safe distance?

[Damien75]

Just found this on another forum, I am not sure if this is valid but from what I read the supernova is predicted for February 2020? But I may have read it wrong who knows lol

stellaris.
Superluminal. A nearby supernova would be spectacular, but I go with you on that source. The author puts it no later than February 2020 for the absolute minimum from his years of observations as part of AAVSO. Nice guide for doing visual magnitudes at different elevations above horizon (declination for rookies)...with corrections for atmospheric extinction. I'll bet a hot fudge sundae that it does not blow up this year, for the first taker, and will gladly pay for the sundae, and all the science to be learned if it does.
I'll up the ante a bit, if it core collapses, and produces a neutron star, the MESA code used by , Patton, Lunardini, Farmer, and Timmes, predicts an increase of neutrino flux by two orders of magnitude in the last half day approaching the final, prompt neutrino burst. At this distance from Betelgeuse, neutrino detectors, particularly those at the Spallation Neutron Source in Tennessee watching COHERENT experiments with cesium iodide doped with thallium, and by Juan Collar, in Chicago (Fermilab), should give ~ 5 hour early warning for observing for a bulletin to be sent out. That would confirm their statistics. I'l bet a second hot fudge sundae, that if it blows, and I lose my first sundae on that bet, that the early warning increase of mixed flavor neutrino fluxes (electron-type, muon-type, and tau-type) will ring detectors all over the world.
SEE:https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.01877.pdf

[Harshil]

[smp]

From Ars Technica:
"New image shows Betelgeuse isn’t dimming evenly"
"Because Betelgeuse is so large and so close, it's actually possible to resolve some details of its surface rather than simply seeing it as a point source of light. Some astronomers have used the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory to do just that, and they've found something extremely weird: Betelgeuse's dimming isn't even."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02 ... ng-evenly/

smp

[AntennaGuy]

From Ars Technica:
"New image shows Betelgeuse isn’t dimming evenly"
"Because Betelgeuse is so large and so close, it's actually possible to resolve some details of its surface rather than simply seeing it as a point source of light. Some astronomers have used the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory to do just that, and they've found something extremely weird: Betelgeuse's dimming isn't even."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02 ... ng-evenly/

smp

Only an astronomer would refer to something hundreds of light years away as "so close."