Author Archives: Chompsky

Actually, it’s been a lot less pronounced lately.

Behold: Betelguese – one of the brightest and most recognised stars in the night sky (it’s that yellowish one off the shoulder of Orion). Only half as bright now as it was five months ago. To wit:

Such variability is likely just normal behavior for this famously variable supergiant, but the recent dimming has rekindled discussion on how long it may be before Betelgeuse does go supernova. Known for its red colour, Betelgeuse is one of the few stars to be resolved by modern telescopes, although only barely. The featured artist’s illustration imagines how Betelgeuse might look up close. Betelgeuse is thought to have a complex and tumultuous surface that frequently throws impressive flares. Were it to replace the Sun (not recommended), its surface would extend out near the orbit of Jupiter, while gas plumes would bubble out past Neptune. Since Betelgeuse is about 700 light years away, its eventual supernova will not endanger life on Earth even though its brightness may rival that of a full Moon. Astronomers — both amateur and professional — will surely continue to monitor Betelgeuse as this new decade unfolds.

(Illustration: ESO, L. Calcada)

apod

The adorably strange obsession of a young teenager preserved in the pages of a scrapbook from the early 1940s recently discovered in the Collingwood Archive of the Cardiff University Special Collections.

To wit: the scrapbook of Janet Gnosspelius (1926-2010), containing every whisker shed by her cats between 1940 and 1942, complete with the time and location of discovery.

Janet would go on to create other cat-related chronicles later in life, as you’d expect.

colossal

Behold: Messier 104, also known as the Sombrero Galaxy – one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster. To wit:

 The dark band of dust that obscures the mid-section of the Sombrero Galaxy in optical light actually glows brightly in infrared light. The featured image, digitally sharpened, shows the infrared glow, recently recorded by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, superposed in false-color on an existing image taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in optical light. The Sombrero Galaxy, also known as M104, spans about 50,000 light years across and lies 28 million light years away. M104 can be seen with a small telescope in the direction of the constellation Virgo.

(Image: R. Kennicutt (Steward Obs.) et al., SSC, JPL, Caltech, NASA)

apod