Singular Stars

Interesting Stars

While by far the most prevalent objects filling the night sky, many of the stars visible do not provide a lot of educational value to the amateur observer. However, those stars can provide interesting insights into many fundamental processes in the greater universe, as well as build on an understanding of some of the historical uses of astronomy for navigation and culture.

Stars' interactions with one another, in the forms of star clusters and binary stars, also provide interesting insight, and are detailed in their respective sections.

Sadr, pictured here, while not the most notable of all stars, does provide an indication of where to find an incredibly dense region of nebulous gasses (shown in red).

Polaris

The North Star

The pole star of the Northern Hemisphere, Polaris has been used for centuries for navigation as it consistently sits high in the northern sky. Due to its position right at the celestial celestial north pole (not exactly centered, however a telescope is required to observe the offset), Polaris does not rotate in the night sky along with every other star.

An interesting technical note to highlight is the diffraction spikes visible in this photo. Due to the supports required to hold a Newtonian's secondary mirror in place, diffraction spikes are created around bright stars. Notice also the rotation of the stars further from Polaris. Tracking and extrapolating the paths of these stars would lead to a circle centered at Polaris.

Betelgeuse

Resolved Image of Betelgeuse

Due to their distance from Earth, all stars (except for the Sun) will appear as non-detailed points of light to an observer with most any amateur equipment. Betelgeuse, however, was the first star with a resolved image (meaning detail was resolved on the star's surface). (NASA, ESA, Dupree, Gilliland, 1996)

Dimming Betelgeuse likely isn’t cold, just dusty

This statement headlined research done by the University of Washington into the reason for Betelgeuse's recent significant dimming. Measurements of visual magnitudes as low as +1.614 taken by Edward Guinan and Richard Wasatonic at Villanova University in January, 2020 led to theories of the star's imminent explosion, however further research suggests that this dimming was simply due to emitted dust absorbing and dimming the light from the star. (Guinan, Wasatonic, 2020) (Urton, 2020)

Of all of the major stars in the night sky, Betelgeuse is one of the most likely to explode into a supernova soon. So mark your calendars for some time between tomorrow and 100,000 years from now!

Supernovae occur when the equilibrium between gravity and pressure that holds a star is thrown out of balance, resulting in a sudden collapse and subsequent explosion. Supernovae are the largest type of explosion that take place in space and have, in the past, produced incredibly bright and notable spectacles to terrestrial observers.

Supernova SN 1054, whose remnant is now a popular observational target as well, was visible during the day for 23 days in 1054 C.E. (per records from Chinese astronomers) and almost two years in the night sky. Other supernovae have been visible from Earth more recently, albeit with less luminosity. Supernova SN1987A was visible to the naked eye, albeit only from some of the darkest skies in the Southern Hemisphere. Should Betelgeuse explode in the near future, its light would rival that of the full Moon, cutting through dense city light pollution, and remaining visible even during the daytime for more than a year.

Citizen Science Opportunities

While Betelgeuse's supernova will not be too difficult to spot, there any many that occur much farther off in space that are not as prominent, and require a significant amount of data analysis to distinguish. One way to contribute to these efforts is through citizen science initiatives, such as those run by Zooniverse, which allow the public to help them determine whether or not their automated system for detecting change in stars has caught something real or erroneous.

Those interested can get involved via the site below:

Zooniverse Supernova Hunters

For a larger, less casual undertaking, there are many, many observatories all of the world collecting massive amounts of data and looking for prospective scientists and students to analyze it for them. Consortiums like the ALFALFA project made use of physics and astronomy students to study data on behalf of the Arecibo telescope. Given enough interest, it may be worthwhile for an interested teacher and some students to try to get involved in a project like this.

Shown on the right is Subject 60617050, which a user identified as a possible supernova candidate based on a sequence of images showing it change over time.

Starting top left and going clockwise, images are:

A wide-field image of the constellation Orion, showing a prominent, orange Betelgeuse in the top left hand corner; via Getty photographer Malcolm Park

A diagram of the stellar lifecycle, via Britannica: Star Formation And Evolution

A mosaic of the Crab Nebula (M1), the remnant of supernova SN1054, via NASA, ESA, Hester, ASU, 2017

Sources and Further Reading

Betelgeuse Image Resolved Hubble Release: https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/1996/04/394-Image.html

Betelgeuse Brightness Measurements via Villanova: https://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=13439

Betelgeuse Theory from U Washington: https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/03/06/dimming-betelgeuse-dust/

Betelgeuse Going Supernova: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/01/betelgeuse-supernova/605251/

Supernova Basics, NASA: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/supernova/en/

Supernova a bit more in depth, NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-a-supernova.html

Zooniverse Supernova Hunters: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/dwright04/supernova-hunters

Stellar Lifecycle via Brittanica: https://www.britannica.com/science/star-astronomy/Star-formation-and-evolution

Crab Mosaic, NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1604.html

Orion, via NPR/Getty: https://www.npr.org/2020/01/02/793129294/a-star-in-orion-is-dimming-is-it-about-to-explode

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