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What Happens When Betelgeuse Explodes?
StartsWithABang writes: One of the great, catastrophic truths of the Universe is that everything has an expiration date. And this includes every single point of light in the entire sky. The most massive stars will die in a spectacular supernova explosion when their final stage of core fuel runs out. At only an estimated 600 light years distant, Betelgeuse is one (along with Antares) of the closest red supergiants to us, and it's estimated to have only perhaps 100,000 years until it reaches the end of its life. Here's the story on what we can expect to see (and feel) on Earth when Betelgeuse explodes.
A bit more than "a little brighter".
It would go from 0.5 (now) to -10 apparent magnitude. That's about 15000 times brighter.
It would be much brighter than Venus/Jupiter/Sirius, and be visible during daytime.
It would be about as bright as a quarter moon.
Yes.
But not by much. It's nearly 200 parsecs away now, and it's moving at about 30 parsecs per million years. So it'll be less than 2% farther away when it booms. Much less, since its relative motion is such that most of those three parsecs will be lateral motion instead of motion away from us.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Its galactic orbit is pretty similar to the Sun's, so its motion relative to the sun is not that large. Still, even if we assumed that only the sun moved, given the galactic speed of the sun, the change in distance would still only be 6 light years, or 1% of its current distance.