General > General Technical Chat
Betelgeuse the star
<< < (9/11) > >>
jaromir:
Majority of people are worried about Betelgeuse, astronomers are rejoicing the extended holidays, because usually you can't directly observe variable star going so much variable in such a detail.

For anyone interested in visualizing some measured data:
1, AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers - https://www.aavso.org/ ) does have tool to plot light curves, in particular for Betelgeuse it looks like this
https://www.aavso.org/lcg/plot?auid=000-BBK-383&starname=BETELGEUSE&lastdays=200&start=&stop=2458896.87343&obscode=&obscode_symbol=2&obstotals=yes&calendar=calendar&forcetics=&pointsize=1&width=800&height=450&mag1=&mag2=&mean=&vmean=&grid=on&visual=on&uband=on&bband=on&v=on

2, Amateur astronomer Michael Hippke created twitter bot to pull data from AAVSO sources, process and post updates. It's open source, available here https://github.com/hippke/betelbot ; live version on twitter is here https://twitter.com/betelbot
paulca:
You have to say his name three times didn't you?

coppercone2:

--- Quote from: Rick Law on February 09, 2020, 04:29:29 am ---Don't worry about Betelgeuse.  With just 60 Starlink satellites launched, they are already causing huge problems for astronomers.  When SpaceX finish lauching 30,000 Starlink satellites, whether Betelgeuse is there or not, you will hardly ever see it or any other stars again.

For some reason, their construction made the satellites very reflective, so it is leaving huge light streaks (on photos) as they travel.  Their brightness is over-powering bright stars let alone dimmer ones.  The problem was identified after the first couple of launches (reference 3), yet by now there are about 60 up there with the same problem...

Attached is a photo (from reference#1) of how these damn satellite-streak looks with mere 60 sats.  Multiply that by 500 (for 30,000 satellites), you can see and how disruptive they are to the view of the sky even for mere star watchers let alone astronomers.

Reference:

1. KXAN (Austin, TX) NBC News: What was that streak of light across the night sky?  (source of the attached photo)
https://www.kxan.com/weather/weather-blog/what-was-that-streak-of-light-across-the-night-sky/ 

2. Space Flight Now: Documents suggest SpaceX may launch 30,000 more Starlink satellites
https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/10/15/documents-suggest-spacex-may-launch-30000-more-starlink-satellites/

3. Phy.Org: Astronomers say SpaceX's satellites are too bright in the sky. Friday's launch will try to fix that
https://phys.org/news/2020-01-astronomers-spacex-satellites-bright-sky.html

--- End quote ---

i knew I saw a problem when they said 'low cost design' and 'aerospace' in the same posting on their job website lol
RoGeorge:
Huge nice Orion pic:


Same source:  Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Hover the mouse over the pic for annotations.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
BU508A:
The VLT in Chile has made some nice pictures as well:



https://phys.org/news/2020-02-eso-telescope-surface-dim-betelgeuse.html
Navigation
Message Index
Next page
Previous page
There was an error while thanking
Thanking...

Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod