its close enough to watch !!!!

ac for fearof the douglas fans ....

RIP dNA

We're obviously not the only ones suffering from deflation.

I think of Beetlejuice when I see the word Betelgeuse

"Some say that "Betelgeuse" refers in fact to Orion's "hand" or "arm". However an awful lot of people go with "armpit of the Central One"

And here's my Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning ....

siigned

Grunthos The Flatulent

...the great collapsing hrung incident on the way?

I understand the explosion of a Type 1a, at such proximity, would probably cause a mass extinction (indeed, some speculate that at least one global extinction event in the past may have been caused by a supernova going off, near by). As it is, this is just going to be one hell of a bright light.

I mean I'm not expert but a few hundred light years is quite close astronomically speaking and it is possible for the radiological effects of a supernova to be felt over quite long distances.

This nomenclature is fairly modern. All stars in a given constellation are names in order of apparent magnitude, so Alpha Orionis is, simply, the brightest star in Orion, Beta Orionis (also known as Rigel) is the second-brightest, and so on.

I've heard both "beetle-juice" and "bettle-guise". Any astronomy geeks care to weigh in?

...i for one welcome our froody overlord-dudes who always know were their towels are

you have a slightly more pressing task at hand to deal with first, namely extending your own lifespan for another 300 years or so. Away you go!

Beetlejuice!

Beetlejuice!

Beetlejuice!

...oh crap.

They do stupid things like demote pluto from planet status for stupid reasons.

If they say it one ways its because the rest of us have made jokes about it.

Zaphod isn't the only luminary to have been left homeless by this...

Sure, I'll weigh in. The answer in my experience is 'yes' and I know that was supposed to be an either or question.

And your comment raises what to my mind at least is the more interesting question. Betelgeuse is as bright as it is currently because it is a fairly hot supergiant. After the supernova, the reduction in both size and temperature are likely to radically reduce its luminosity. So will it remain Alpha Orionis because it was designated that at the time of it's discovery, or do we reorganize the names of all the stars in the constellation?

I bet one of the astronomers let Betelgeuse go through the wash in his or her pants pocket.

This is clearly Tharg the Mighty winding up a Rigellian Hotshot, as ane fule kno.

It's 20 times heavier than the sun. It's hardly going to "shake a galaxy" when it goes. It'll be a typical type 2 burnout. Shining at several times the brightness of the full moon for maybe a week or two.

Type 2s blow off their surface layers when they go, and it is those surface layers that absorb the radiation from the explosion and produce the visible light. You, me, the air you breathe and everything in your imediate vicinity - all of this matter was createdd during a process just such as this, when some unknown star, or stars, exploded long in the past. Type 2s are the creators of worlds, not their destroyers.

Technically, no supernova could ever directly cause a mass extinction, anyway. Even a Gamma ray burst from a 1a would only blow off the planet's ozone layer on the exposed hemisphere: it would be your own star that then slowly irradiated all the life on the affected half of the planet during the days that followed. If you happened to have the good fortune to be on the shadow side from the burst, you'd probably retain enough ozone above you to survive until the ozone across the afflicted side had replenished itself.

No, sorry: the Brazilians are right. It's the greedy blue-eyed white bastards that will probably be the death of us, not some distant star.

If he or she had done that, the rest of Orion would now also be a washed out pinkish colour too.

Good points, but to put my pedant hat on, only those elements heavier than iron and nickel are typically created during R-nucleosynthesis in a supernova. 'You, me, the air you breathe and everything in your imediate vicinity' are all things that are typically composed of light elements -e.g. hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulphur, etc., which are created once a star moves off the main sequence and becomes a red giant.

But we wouldn't see that for about 430 years or so. If it wasn't for the pesky vacuum of deep space we might have heard it rattling around in the drum during the rinse cycle.

>>Type 2s are the creators of worlds, not their destroyers.

Er - I think that depends on the the space-time coordinates of the worlds in question...?

Err, I think Daniel was generally referring to "worlds" that were to develop after the supernova. Obviously.

Personally I suspect this was more related to the activities of one Zaphod Beeblebrox who in the process of trying to "relieve" the planet of some valuable asset or other maybe went a little over the top and did his version of the infamous Michael Kane line "You're only supposed to blow the ruddy doors off...!".

Or it was a giant bouncy castle...

...to 56 LY out from BJ. Quite a pretty show. Planning to go back next year to 57 LY out and see it again.