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This commissioned photo shows a silhouette of Betelgeuse taken on a moonlit night. Photo by Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – One of the biggest and brightest stars in the night sky will disappear for a moment when an asteroid passes in front of it to produce a total solar eclipse.
The sight is rare and brief, late Monday to early Tuesday, should be seen by millions of people on a narrow path that starts from central Asia Tajikistan and Armenia, to over Turkey, Greece, Italy and Spain, in Miami and the Florida Keys and finally, in the area of Mexico.
SEE: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned a sample of an asteroid to Earth
The star Betelgeuse is a red moon in the constellation Orion. The Leo asteroid is a space rock that orbits slowly in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Astronomers hope to learn more about Betelgeuse and Leo through the eclipse, which is expected to last no longer than 15 seconds. By observing an eclipse of the darkest star Leona did in September, a Spanish-led team recently estimated the asteroid to be about 34 miles in diameter and 50 miles long ( 55 km wide and 80 km long).
This first direct image of a star other than the Sun, made with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, shows the red star called Alpha Orionis, or Betelgeuse. The star marks the shoulder of the winter constellation Orion the Hunter. Photo credit: Andrea Dupree (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA), Ronald Gilliland (STScI), NASA and ESA
There is still uncertainty in those predictions as well as the size of the star and its general environment. It is not clear whether the asteroid will obscure the entire star, producing a total eclipse. Instead, the result can be a “ring of fire” with a small red border around the star. If it’s a total eclipse, astronomers aren’t sure how many seconds the star will be completely blacked out, maybe up to 10 seconds.
“What show we will see is uncertain, which makes the event even more spectacular,” said astronomer Gianluca Masa, founder of the Virtual Telescope Project, which will provide a website from Italy.
About 700 light-years away, Betelgeuse is visible to the naked eye. Binoculars and small telescopes will improve visibility. A light year is 5.8 million miles.
SEE: NASA has launched a mission to explore the asteroid Psyche
Betelgeuse is thousands of times brighter than our sun and about 700 times brighter. It is so big that if it replaces our sun, it will reach beyond Jupiter, according to NASA.
At only 10 million years old, Betelgeuse is much younger than the 4.6 billion year old star. Scientists believe that Betelgeuse is short-lived, due to its weight and the speed at which it burns its contents.
After centuries of varying brightness, Betelgeuse became very dim in 2019 after throwing a lot of material into space. The resulting dust cloud blocked the starlight, NASA said, and within half a year, Betelgeuse was as bright as ever.
Scientists think Betelgeuse will go supernova in a violent explosion within 100,000 years.
Left:
This commissioned photo shows a silhouette of Betelgeuse taken on a moonlit night. Photo by Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images