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Betelgeuse — Wikipedia (en)

Source: Wikipedia (en)
Original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse
License (as archived): CC-BY-SA-4.0
Archived: 2026-10-07T21:56:15.847Z
SHA-256 of the archived text: c1604409cd986162be8e9e726b361a5b354660145164389c59cf4937e2dbb8ca
Stable URL of this page: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_41fbbe30fdce

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Betelgeuse — Wikipedia (en) — Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse (CC-BY-SA-4.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_41fbbe30fdce (Metraipolis archive dc_41fbbe30fdce, sha256 c1604409cd986162be8e9e726b361a5b354660145164389c59cf4937e2dbb8ca)

BibTeX

@misc{dc41fbbe30fdce,
  title = {Betelgeuse — Wikipedia (en)},
  howpublished = {Wikipedia (en)},
  url = {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse},
  note = {License CC-BY-SA-4.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_41fbbe30fdce; sha256 c1604409cd986162be8e9e726b361a5b354660145164389c59cf4937e2dbb8ca},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC-BY-SA-4.0. Attribution: Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star in the equatorial constellation of Orion. It is usually the tenth-brightest star in the night sky and, after Rigel, the second brightest in its constellation. It is a distinctly reddish, semiregular variable star whose apparent magnitude, varying between +0.0 and +1.6, with a main period near 400 days, has the widest range displayed by any first-magnitude star. Betelgeuse is the brightest star in the night sky at near-infrared wavelengths. Its Bayer designation is α Orionis, Latinised to Alpha Orionis and abbreviated Alpha Ori or α Ori. With a radius between 640 and 764 times that of the Sun, if it were at the center of the Solar System, its surface would lie beyond the asteroid belt and it would engulf the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Calculations of Betelgeuse's mass range from slightly under ten to a little over twenty times that of the Sun. For various reasons, its distance has been quite difficult to measure; current best estimates are of the order of 400–600 light-years from the Sun – a comparatively wide uncertainty for a relatively nearby star. Its absolute magnitude is about −6. With an age of less than 10 million years, Betelgeuse has evolved rapidly because of its large mass, and is expected to end its evolution with a supernova explosion, most likely within 100,000 years. When Betelgeuse detonates as a brilliant type II supernova, it will shine as bright as the half-Moon for more than three months; life on Earth will be unharmed. Having been ejected from its birthplace in the Orion OB1 association – which includes the stars in Orion's Belt – this runaway star has been observed to be moving through the interstellar medium at a speed of 30 km/s, creating a bow shock over four light-years wide. Betelgeuse became the first extrasolar star whose photosphere's angular size was measured in 1920, and subsequent studies have reported an angular diameter (i.e., apparent size) ranging from 0.042 to 0.056 arcseconds; that range of determinations is ascribed to non-sphericity, limb darkening, pulsations and varying appearance at different wavelengths. It is also surrounded by a complex, asymmetric envelope, roughly 250 times the size of the star, caused by mass loss from the star itself. The Earth-observed angular diameter of Betelgeuse is exceeded only by those of R Doradus and the Sun. Starting in October 2019, Betelgeuse began to dim noticeably, and by mid-February 2020 its brightness had dropped by a factor of approximately 3, from magnitude 0.5 to 1.7. It then returned to a more normal brightness range, reaching a peak of 0.0 visual and 0.1 V-band magnitude in April 2023. Infrared observations found no significant change in luminosity over the last 50 years, suggesting that the dimming was due to a change in extinction around the star rather than a more fundamental change. A study using the Hubble Space Telescope suggests that occluding dust was created by a surface mass ejection; this materia

Tema degli esploratori: fisica e astronomia (deposito sistematico; ricerca «astrophysics»).
Fonte: Wikipedia in inglese, voce «Betelgeuse» — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse
Wikidata Q12124 (dati Wikidata in CC0 1.0) — https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q12124
Autori: i contributori di Wikipedia (cronologia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse?action=history).
Licenza: Creative Commons Attribuzione-Condividi allo stesso modo 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Il riuso richiede attribuzione e stessa licenza.
Estratto dell'introduzione non modificato nel contenuto; revisione 1378727754, consultata il 2026-10-07T21:33:53.630Z tramite l'API ufficiale di Wikipedia. Impronta SHA-256 dell'estratto: 7bfbf02f4a98a10411570d0baedc66f27d46a3f25d0e7a9824d20254da650207