Betelgeuse Will Briefly Disappear In Once-in-a-Lifetime Coincidence (scientificamerican.com) 33
Meghan Bartels reports via Scientific American: Some sky watchers this month will witness Betelgeuse, one of the brightest and best-known stars in the sky, nearly disappear. Mere seconds later -- despite astronomers' hopes that the star will meet its explosive end someday soon -- it will return, shining just as brightly as ever. Betelgeuse's brief blip of obscurity will mark a cosmic coincidence: an asteroid will block the star from view over a thin strip of Earth's surface. Scientists are hailing this celestial alignment as a once-in-a-lifetime occasion that, they hope, will permit them to glimpse Betelgeuse's ever changing surface of hot and cold patches in the best resolution to date. The opportunity comes courtesy of a sizable asteroid called Leona, which astronomers first spotted in 1891. On its own, Leona is just another space rock cluttering up the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. But at 8:17 P.M. ET on December 11 Leona will slip directly between Earth and Betelgeuse, a red supergiant star that, unlike the asteroid, has been recognized by countless generations of humans around the world. [...]
To understand how special the event is, consider the total solar eclipse that will occur in April 2024. During the climax of the eclipse, viewers across a narrow strip of Earth's surface will see the moon pass directly in front of the sun. Because the two bodies appear as the same size in our sky, the moon will entirely block the visible disk of the sun and expose the faint, wispy halo called the corona, a layer of our home star's atmosphere that scientists otherwise cannot see from Earth. Similarly, the roughly 40-mile-wide Leona appears in the sky as about the same size as the enormous but very distant Betelgeuse. This will allow the asteroid to block all or most of the star's light when the two bodies perfectly align. But whereas Earth experiences a total solar eclipse every 18 months or so, occultations of bright stars such as Betelgeuse are extremely rare, occurring less than once a century [...].
To understand how special the event is, consider the total solar eclipse that will occur in April 2024. During the climax of the eclipse, viewers across a narrow strip of Earth's surface will see the moon pass directly in front of the sun. Because the two bodies appear as the same size in our sky, the moon will entirely block the visible disk of the sun and expose the faint, wispy halo called the corona, a layer of our home star's atmosphere that scientists otherwise cannot see from Earth. Similarly, the roughly 40-mile-wide Leona appears in the sky as about the same size as the enormous but very distant Betelgeuse. This will allow the asteroid to block all or most of the star's light when the two bodies perfectly align. But whereas Earth experiences a total solar eclipse every 18 months or so, occultations of bright stars such as Betelgeuse are extremely rare, occurring less than once a century [...].
Getting it to reappear (Score:5, Funny)
It will reappear as soon as someone says "Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse!"
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It will reappear as soon as someone says "Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse!"
Does Michael Keaton have to be there, or can he be within six degrees like Kevin Bacon?
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It will reappear as soon as someone says "Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse!"
Does Michael Keaton have to be there, or can he be within six degrees like Kevin Bacon?
So now we have 360 arc minutes of Michael Keaton?
"8:17 P.M. ET on December 11" (Score:5, Informative)
Nice job posting the story hours after it happened.
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Well, you had to travel to all sorts of wild and remote places on the far side of the globe like Florida, Mexico or Greece to see it, so what use would it have been if it had been on time?
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"Travel", pshaw! Only if you wanted to visit the film studio where that "stars" hoax is faked -- otherwise there's not much point in viewing it in realtime.
Just take a look out of your window: do you see any "stars"? Assuming night time, what you see is mid-gray background highlighted by street lights, car lights, window lights, ad lights. If you look very closely, sometimes there's indeed a shining thing, but it moves -- it's a plane.
Astronomers will tell you they climb remote places like Mauna Kea beca
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The next red giant occultation is in a few weeks (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't be too sad if you missed it. Another red supergiant, Antares, will pass behind the moon on 8th January (2024).
It is a fairly common occurrence, though of course only for stars near the ecliptic.
https://in-the-sky.org/news.ph... [in-the-sky.org]
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...It is a fairly common occurrence...
"In Once-in-a-Lifetime Coincidence"
Apparently, so is clickbait.
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Apparently, so is clickbait.
Yep, asteroidal occlusions of bright stars are rare, and very exciting to astronomers. But the moon is BIG. There are four bright stars that cross its path, which is cool for amateur skygazers if you happen to be in the right place, and it is night.
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More like "Not even able to read the entire summary". The uncommon bit is that this asteroid is able to produce a total eclipse of the Betelgeuse, which requires a tiny little dot in the sky to be almost exactly the same size as another tiny little dot in the sky, and for those two tiny dots to align in the sky. It'll be like the difference between seeing a sunset and a total eclipse. How much corona do you see during a sunset?
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Sunset has the problem of looking through Earth's atmosphere. Think that through. With sunset on the moon, you would get a good look at half the corona.
I hope they use this to map the asteroid (Score:5, Interesting)
A really cool trick you can do when this happens is have various observers around the globe time the occlusion. This lets you build a really accurate image of the shape of the asteroid at the time. It's pretty neat.
Re:I hope they use this to map the asteroid (Score:5, Informative)
lol I shouldn't post tired. Quick look on wikipedia informs that they did an occultation mapping for the asteroid with another star in September so they could be ready for a more detailed one now.
Re: I hope they use this to map the asteroid (Score:3)
This eclipse didn't fair too well for measurements as it happened mostly over the ocean, and wouldn't have a good number of observers with fair weather.
As Predicted by Douglas Adams (Score:3)
The Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster has occurred on Betelgeuse Seven.
band (Score:2)
"Wispy Halo" would be a great name for a band.
(Or a video game)
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"Will" ??? (Score:2)
How nice it would have been to know of this beforehand.
How nice it would have been if the article (and most others that were found via websearch) actually included a way to know the place and time where this could have been observed [iota-es.de].
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Set of observations by people in Europe (Score:4, Informative)
The following webpage contains a set of light curves and videos from astronomers in Europe who succeeded in measuring the brief dimming of Betelgeuse last night:
https://call4obs.iota-es.de/ob... [iota-es.de]
Coincidences are a statistical certainty (Score:2)
The relative space for which we would define a "coincidence" is almost as large as the chances of any individual act occurring is small.
Yes it's a once in a lifetime event that Betelgeuse will be occluded. But there's a *LOT* of stars in the sky, so many that such occultations are used to map star pairs.
Wasn't a total occultation (Score:3)
Turned out that it only dimmed slightly. Seems the asteroid either wasn't big enough or the alignment wasn't as exact as they thought.
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I just watched a few videos with all showing very noticeable dimming but not a complete eclipse. Still very cool though.
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Sad news (Score:2)
I am sad to report that Betelgeuse survived the occultation. We are sorry, but this lustering bully of a star will continue to scream its perverse message into the void.