Night Skies: Is Beetlejuice about to explode?

IF you look to the south you cannot fail to see the splendid constellation of Orion the Hunter.

Seven bright stars make up this constellation; four that form a large rectangle and inside this the three stars that form the belt of Orion.

It will quickly be seen that six of the seven stars that form Orion are blue/white in colour, while one is distinctly red.

The red star in the top left hand corner of the rectangle is called Betelgeux, or as some people like to call it, Beetlejuice!

However, this star is acting very strangely at the moment.

Betelgeux has become much fainter than usual, leading some astronomers to think that the star is about to destroy itself in a massive explosion called a Supernova. Astronomers predict this will happen within the next one million years, but could it be about to happen?

If Betelgeux were to explode, then for a period of a few weeks there would be a very bright star in the sky which would fade and disappear, changing the pattern of Orion forever.

Supernova only occur about once every 300 years in our galaxy and the last was in 1604 so we are due for another. As Betelgeux is only 642 light years away it would be the closest supernova seen.

Of course, it should be pointed out that Betelgeux is also a variable star; a star that changes in brightness over a period of time, and it has been seen to be very faint before - in 1927 and 1941.

We will have to wait and see, but for the rest of this winter it could be worthwhile glancing up to Betelgeux from time to make sure it is still there!

February is the best month to look for Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. The brightness of Sirius is due to it being fairly close to us. It can be found by using the three stars of Orion’s belt. Draw a line down and to the left and you will see Sirius, so bright that it cannot be mistaken.

Sirius is only 8.5 light years away. This means that any readers with family members around eight and a half years old can tell them that, if they look at Sirius this year, the light that will enter their eyes would have left Sirius the year they were born.

Scientists use the light year as a measurement of distances in space because the mile is too small a unit to use.

A light year is the distance covered by a particle of light in a year and light travels at 186,000 miles per second or 300,000 km per second. In one year, light covers a distance of roughly 6 million million miles (which can be written as 6,000000,000000), or 9.5 million million km (which can be written as 9.5,000000,000000 km).

Sirius is also known as the Dog Star. It is the brightest star in the constellation of Canis Major, the Great Dog.

It was very important to the ancient Egyptians because they used to watch for Sirius to rise in the morning sky just before the Sun.

They knew that when they saw Sirius in the morning the river Nile would be about to flood and they had to make sure that their fields were prepared, with seeds in the ground, ready for the water that would irrigate the crops.

Although Sirius the Dog Star looks like a star on its own, it is actually a double star; it has a faint companion star that was discovered in 1862, when a new telescope was being tested. The companion star is a white dwarf; a small but very dense star roughly the size of the Earth but having about half the mass of the Sun.

A tablespoon of white dwarf material would weigh several tons. Officially the Star is known as ‘Sirius B’, but because Sirius is the Dog Star, the white dwarf star is unofficially known as ‘the Pup’.

As for the rest of the winter skies, Capella, in Auriga, which occupied the overhead point in January, can now be found just to the west of that overhead point but is still very easy to find. Some of the winter stars are now beginning to drop to the west, although they are still easy to find.

Using Orion’s belt a line drawn to the right and slightly upwards will reach the bright red star Aldebaran in Taurus and if this line is then continued you will reach the Pleiades or Seven Sisters which look like a fuzzy patch in the sky.

The Pleiades are also in Taurus. The other bright stars in the winter sky, Procyon in Canis Minor and Castor and Pollux in Gemini, are now all at their highest points in the sky.

Our other signpost constellation, the Plough, can now be found quite high in the north east. Unlike Orion, which can only be seen in the winter, the Plough can be seen all year around.

This means of course that with the Plough becoming higher in the sky the ‘W’ of Cassiopeia is now getting lower in the north west. The spring stars are just beginning to appear very low on the horizon.

The Planets in February:

Venus continues to dominate the south western sky.

It cannot be missed and is seen as a bright white ‘star’. Venus sets up to four hours after the Sun this month. Another evening planet this month will be Mercury, which can be seen for about 30 minutes after sunset between the 7th and 19th.

Mars is still a morning object with Jupiter and Saturn still being too close to the Sun to be seen.

Phases of the Moon for February:

First Quarter 2; Full Moon 9; Last Quarter 15; New Moon 23.

The Full Moon in February is called the Snow Moon. Although at the time of writing it has not yet been a cold winter, this is the month when we are most likely to see snow and have the coldest weather.

The next meeting of the Earby Astronomical Society will be on Friday, February 28 at All Saints’ Church, Earby from 7.30 pm until 9pm pm. The speaker will be Martin Lunn MBE FRAS Earby Astronomical Society, and the title of the talk will be ‘Gemini the Twins and the Small Dog’