Astronomers are waiting for the eclipse of the giant star Betelgeuse
Scientists are waiting for an eclipse that will cause the disappearance of Betelgeuse, the closest red giant star to Earth and its brightest star in the night sky.
It is expected that an asteroid passing momentarily in front of the star will produce a unique eclipse, late between next Monday and Tuesday, and its view will be available to millions of people from Tajikistan and Armenia in Central Asia, and in Turkey, Greece, Italy and Spain, all the way to Miami and the Florida Keys archipelago. And even some areas of Mexico.
The star Betelgeuse is located in the Orion constellation, and the asteroid Leona, a rectangular space rock that slowly rotates in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is supposed to pass in front of it.
Astronomers hope to learn more about Betelgeuse and Leona during the eclipse, which is expected to last more than 15 seconds.
A Spanish-led team was recently able, by observing the eclipse of a star dimmer than Leona last September, to estimate the dimensions of the asteroid, indicating that its width is 55 kilometers and its length is 80 kilometers.
There are still doubts about these predictions, in addition to the size of the star and its expanding atmosphere.
It’s unclear whether the asteroid will obscure the entire star, creating a total eclipse, or whether it might create a “ring of fire” with small flaming boundaries around the star.
If the eclipse is total, astronomers cannot be certain how many seconds it will take for the star to disappear completely, which may be up to ten seconds.
“We are still not sure what we will see, which makes the event even more interesting,” said the founder of the Virtual Telescope Project, which will provide a live online broadcast from Italy, astronomer Gianluca Massa.
Betelgeuse, which is about seven hundred light-years away from Earth, can be seen with the naked eye. It is thousands of times brighter than our sun and about seven hundred times larger. However, its age, which does not exceed ten million years, does not compare to the sun, which is more than 4.6 billion years old.
Scientists believe that the short lifespan of Betelgeuse is due to its mass and the speed with which its matter burns.
(AP)
