Yes, Find Friends, that’s probably what prompted this question. And yes, to the naked eye, Betelgeuse is quite obviously much dimmer than usual right now. Last time I saw it, I wasn’t even sure it was in second place any more: It appeared comparable to the belt stars in brightness.
Probably not. The way we’re going to refine those theories is by watching Betelgeuse go supernova. Or at least, by watching some star similar to Betelgeuse go supernova that we’ve had a long history of watching in detail before it goes, but that probably means Betelgeuse. You can construct models until the spherical cows come home, but you can never trust them without observations.
Not only are you wrong about Orion being star, you’re copying an entire sentence without crediting the source.
Taylor, D. (2013, March 29). 5 things you might not know about Tim Burton’s ‘Beetlejuice’. IndieWire. Retrieved from https://www.indiewire.com
You know those 3 stars in a line in Orion. Where one of them is slightly offset. Easily seen in the sky.
Well the middle star is 2000 light years away whilst the 2 end stars are less than 1000 light years away. Its just perspective that plays tricks.
In other words, if you travelled at the speed of light in a vacuum, which we will never be able to do., you will reach one of those stars in a 1000 years and then will have to travel another 2000 years to reach the middle star.
Well, Mintaka is 1200 ly away, give or take, and Alnilam (the centre star) is about 2000 ly away - so you’d only have to travel 800 ly between the two, not 2000; but you are broadly correct. The error bars on these distances are quite large anyway, so the values could be significantly different.
Interesting fact! Does anyone know what the most extreme example of this is amongst the constellations? ie Is there one containing a star(s) absolutely nowhere near the others, in cosmological terms. It just looks clustered together from our perspective stargazing on earth.
I was about to post that Ford is who put that star on my radar as a young’un.
When I think Rigel, I think the Rigellians from The Simpsons; the green tentacled cyclops creatures that show up usually on Halloween episodes as a pair in their flying saucer. (Their names are Kang and Kodos by the way.)
Also, apparently Marvel has a brand of Rigellians, psionic big-headed aliens. I wasn’t aware of them without Google.
Well, I think due to the film, likely more laypeople have heard of Betelgeuse than Rigel.
Polaris is likely the most well know star- “the brightest star that shines”.
My guess is that it is rare. Most stars that are easily visible to the naked eye are within a few hundred light years of Earth. The seven stars in the Big Dipper asterism (not a constellation I admit) are between 78 and 124 light years distant.
Apart from the sun, Sirius is the brightest star in the sky. Polaris is something like the 50th. Not even close, but plenty visible.
This is the best answer I know:
V762 (Cas) in Cassiopeia is 16,308 light years away. It is magnitude 5.8 which is reasonable visible to the naked eye with a dark sky.
Eta Cassiopeiae is the nearest star in Cassiopeia is 19.4 light years away. It has a magnitude of 3.45.
To me the most extreme example of a constellation with stars at widely different distances is Cygnus, which has 61 Cygni, a very close star only 11 light years away, and Deneb, a brilliant star which is currently thought to be 2600 light years away. Both are visible with the naked eye, although 61 Cygni is a very dim spark lost in the Milky Way. Deneb is spectacular, despite its distance
Another constellation with widely separate stars is Cassiopeia; Eta Cassiopeiae is only 19 light years away but Rho Cassiopeiae is maybe 3400 lys distant. Both of these are fairly easy to see, although Rho Cass is highly variable (just like Betelgeuse). In fact Rho Cass is one of a very small number of stars that has a good chance of already having exploded in the 3400 years since it emnited the light we now see.
Ninja’d
Note that OldGuy has chosen a different star in Cassiopeia, but a very good one.
As popular as the notion is that Polaris is the brightest star, it must have been even worse during those times when Vega is the pole star. Where the north celestial pole is relative to the stars shifts with a cycle of about 26,000 years, so other stars get turns being the star closest to the pole. And Vega (which sometimes takes such a turn) still isn’t the brightest, but it’s the fifth-brightest.