If Betelgeuse Went...

[Guest]

A little humour. 😂

[Alien 13]

I wonder how many of us already have a plan at the back of our minds on capturing the first moments of the bang, remember it will be possible to image it in daylight too especially at higher effective "magnifications".

Alan 

Edited September 2, 2020 by Alien 13

[Marvin Jenkins]

Just remember when viewing the big B through a telescope from now on, to use your eye that is least preferred. If it goes pop when viewing then you won’t lose the sight in your preferred viewing eye.

If you are the kind of astronomer that lives a rock and roll lifestyle and uses a bino viewer, then the risks of the big B going nova are not to be taken lightly. 🤩

Marv

[Marvin Jenkins]

I know I have been a bit tongue in cheek, but this has cropped up before. There is a very long thread on here about Big B and it’s recent magnitude fluctuations.

Way above my pay grade but there is a suggestion that a huge wave of neutrinos would signal the impending Nova, and Lord knows there are people on here that understand that stuff and can explain it in a more complicated way than I.

In short, it is a joke on my part. Your chance of being blinded by Big B is incredibly small. I have seen quotes that say it is going to be so bright, that for a short period it will be like a second sun in our sky. That’s day time!

Try that with a 7mm ep and 2x Barlow and feel how your eyeballs cope. I maybe wrong, and please correct, but the last time this happened was the Crab Neb, recorded by the Chinese a thousand years ago?
 

Marv

[Nigella Bryant]

Betelgeuse latest. New observations are relatively sparse and there is some inconsistency, a picture has begun to emerge which suggests that as soon as Betelgeuse had recovered from the deep fade to V ∼0.2 the star began to fade again, and at a very similar rate to the deep fade. Observations are required. 

[Paul M]

[kirkster501]

I’m sure it would be cloudy for several

months none-stop if it did go.

[DaveS]

And it would happen in summer.

[Nigella Bryant]

1 hour ago, DaveS said:

And it would happen in summer.

Yeah, but it'll be like a smaller second sun in the daylight so we'd still see it, lol.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Yeah, but it'll be like a smaller second sun in the daylight so we'd still see it, lol.

Unless you live in Scotland, like I do!  The sun is a distant memory!🤣

[DaveS]

I think, that even if you were looking at Betelgeuse through a 'scope when it went bang you still wouldn't be blinded as it's not an instantaneous flash. I think you'd see it rapidly becoming bright and blue giving time to get your eye away from the eyepiece.

[Nigella Bryant]

Would spectroscopic observations indicate any changes in the star before it exploded? I've only a star analyser 100 but wondered if you would see change's in the fraunhofer line's?

[DaveS]

Possibly, though I think if you waited a while you'd have a flood of data.

I think the real alarm signal will be the flood of neutrinos. Given how close it is, and how much better our detectors are since the 1987 supernova in the LMC, they might actually saturate!

[Marvin Jenkins]

I did mention the neutrino aspect in my previous post. Please could someone explain why a huge burst of neutrinos would happen in the moments before a super nova.

Due to my lack of knowledge of the subject I have to deduce that a neutrino burst happens first, nova after.

The speed of light being the limiting factor if both things happened at ‘point of nova’ we would experience both at the same time here on Earth?
 

Furthermore, what is the suspected difference in time from neutrino burst to nova?
Are we talking minutes, hours or days? If the last local SN was 1600 ad and something, then am I safe to assume that the current hypothesis is exactly that, best guess? I am pretty sure no one was measuring neutrino bursts in the seventeenth century.

Marv

[DaveS]

My understanding is that it takes the shock wave about an hour to work its way to the surface while the neutrinos escape almost at the speed of light so we see then about an hour before the supernova becomes bright.

[Marvin Jenkins]

Not a lot of notice then. Do you think astronomers should get a warning via social media on the grounds of health and safety?

Come to think of it, is the big B being monitored 24/7 for neutrino bursts?
Marv

[DaveS]

For fast response telescopes like the ones they use for following GRBs an hour is like an age.

I'm not sure if neutrino detectors are directional, I suspect not, but the flood of neutrinos could only mean one thing, and there is only one likely candidate.

[DaveS]

The figures I've seen suggest that it would be about as bright as the full moon, so about 1 million times less bright than the sun. Painful to look at through a telescope but not blindingly so.

The real fun would come in the years following, when we have an expanding SNR to study close up.

[Marvin Jenkins]

In all seriousness the idea put about that astronomers could be blinded by B (mainly put out there by me) is far fetched. It has been pointed out to me that in the life of star we could be a million years away from B going nova.

The flip side of that is that B has been incredibly dynamic recently, so no one being a living expert it go off tonight!

The more dynamic it becomes the more astronomers will observe it, especially as there have been calls for amateurs to estimate it’s magnitude.

If the time from neutrino reception to nova is one hour or less then no matter how ridiculous some caution may be adhered to. 
Marv

[Marvin Jenkins]

8 minutes ago, DaveS said:

The figures I've seen suggest that it would be about as bright as the full moon, so about 1 million times less bright than the sun. Painful to look at through a telescope but not blindingly so.

The real fun would come in the years following, when we have an expanding SNR to study close up.

But can you imagine how boring the AP thread will be. Another SNR of B..... for years.

[DaveS]

There's some casual combining of  Nova and Supernova where they are two totally different events. a SN isn't simply a nova that's a bit brighter than normal, and the electrons aren't simply degenerate, but are forced into combining with Protons to form Neutrons, with the release of a flood of neutrinos, which carry 90%+ of a supernova's energy. What we see as light is only a very minor part of the energy release.

[Nigella Bryant]

11 minutes ago, DaveS said:

There's some casual combining of  Nova and Supernova where they are two totally different events. a SN isn't simply a nova that's a bit brighter than normal, and the electrons aren't simply degenerate, but are forced into combining with Protons to form Neutrons, with the release of a flood of neutrinos, which carry 90%+ of a supernova's energy. What we see as light is only a very minor part of the energy release.

I suspect we'd see, or should I say, "observe" a flood of neutrinos before we observe the obvious supernova visually. I would also think that there would be an observed change in the Fraunhofer lines of the pre supernova as the gases would become excited and become supercharged. The change's surely would become dynamic and spread the frequencies/wavelengths that we observe resulting in a widening/broadening of the Fraunhofer line's. How long we'd have to observe the change is anyone's guess. We could perhaps by chance observe this.

[messier 111]

I hope it explodes in my life time .
and for those who say Orion will never be the same again, well, orion will be different that's all.
one star less, but a remnant of star gas like m1 maybe.
so something new to contemplate.

[kirkster501]

10 hours ago, messier 111 said:

I hope it explodes in my life time .
and for those who say Orion will never be the same again, well, orion will be different that's all.
one star less, but a remnant of star gas like m1 maybe.
so something new to contemplate.

It'd be hundreds of years until the gas cloud became visible enough for amateurs to see.  I'd rather keep it as it is

[LukeSkywatcher]

On 04/09/2020 at 18:20, kirkster501 said:

I’m sure it would be cloudy for several

months none-stop if it did go.

Least we would be able to sleep without blackout blinds.