A closeup look of Betelgeuse a red supergiant 650 light years away from Earth (i.redd.it)

submitted 5 hours ago by ooli3@sopuli.xyz to c/space@beehaw.org

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[-] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Wiki

~700x the size of our Sun. It would engulf out past mars and the asteroid belt

[-] homologous@piefed.blahaj.zone 18 points 4 hours ago

Betelgeuse my beloved <3 <3 i hope i live to see the day you explode

[-] Verenos@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago

Probably already has, sadly we won’t know until that light reaches us.

[-] tetris11@feddit.uk 1 points 1 minute ago

We don't know how far away it actually is: it could be 500 light years away; it could be just around the corner getting a pack of ciggies and a six-pack to watch the footie on the sky box a bit later, yeah? Come around six, I'll get the missus to defrost a pizza and we can talk fantasy football

[-] Twanquility@feddit.dk 13 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Except that it's wrong. Space is cool, and Betelgeuse is impressive, but that isn't how it looks.

The star is out of focus, and the movement is due to the earths atmosphere. I could get that visual with my phone and a handheld binocular.

Any image of a star (except for our own sun), which is more than just a point of light, is a faulty representation. It's misleading. Share cool stuff, but let's not say things that we don't know to be true.

Actually i just said something that i assumed to be true, but wasn't

""Any image of a star (except for our own sun), which is more than just a point of light, is a faulty representation.""

Turns out we do have 'higher' resolution pictures of stars, thanks to raoul. I'm sorry. mistakes were made. I'll go on my lunchbreak now and think about what I've done.

[-] raoul@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 3 hours ago

Any image of a star (except for our own sun), which is more than just a point of light, is a faulty representation. It's misleading. Share cool stuff, but let's not say things

That's not true. We have higher resolution that a pixel.

[-] Twanquility@feddit.dk 3 points 2 hours ago

You got me! I did not know we had that. Thanks. Which one is that?

(I guess we also have the images of the light surrounding black hole in the center of our galaxy, which is also quite far away, and has quite som pixels. Although it is also larger than a typical star.)