You may or may not have noticed there's something a bit off about Orion lately.
His shoulder's missing.
Betelgeuse, otherwise known as Alpha Orionis, has dimmed dramatically of late. Now, Betelgeuse is a variable star - not entirely stable, the star's brightness does differ over time. However, we've never seen it drop by a full magnitude over the space of no more than two months. Most likely, Betelgeuse will spring back to life in a few weeks...
...but there's also an outside chance the red giant is about to go supernova. The star has the right level and kind of mass to explode, and scientists know it will at some point...but it could be thousands of years in the future.
Or it could already have happened – Betelgeuse is 640 light years away, so we're seeing the star as it was a few hundred years ago.
So, what happens if Betelgeuse becomes a supernova?
The star will become, for a while, a hundred times brighter than Venus, easily visible in the daytime if you know where to look.
We'll be close enough to get some interesting data about supernovae, but far enough away that any gamma ray burst from Betelgeuse won't reach us (the estimate for that is about 50 light years).
Mostly, we'll just get to say we actually saw a supernova. And that will be cool...but unlikely. More likely, Betelgeuse will return to "normal" soon enough...
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