Researchers are preparing for what will be seen when the star dies in a fiery explosion called a supernova. Located in the constellation Orion, the star is about 1,000 times the size of our sun.
In a new study, researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have modeled the stellar explosions that occur when pulsating supergiants like Betelgeuse die. And this has been the spectacular result.
" We wanted to know what it would look like if a pulsating star exploded in different phases of pulsation, " said Jared Goldberg, lead author of the study and a physics graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the statement. "The previous models are simpler because they do not include the time-dependent effects of the pulsations."
"It just looks like a supernova of a larger star or a smaller star at different points in the pulsation," Goldberg clarified. "It's when you start to consider the beats that are more complicated, where there are things that move at the same time as things that move, hence our model really shows remarkable differences."
Reference: ESO / M. KORNMESSER
