Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars in the sky, will almost disappear next week. Here’s how to see it.

• Betelgeuse, one of our brightest stars, will nearly disappear on December 12.

• This is because it is a “once in a lifetime” event, such as an asteroid blocking the star’s light.

• Amateur astronomers can monitor the event themselves and provide valuable data to scientists.

BetelgeuseThe star, one of the most visible stars in our sky, has been exhibiting strange behavior for the past few years.

The red supergiant in the constellation Orion suddenly darkened in 2019, causing astronomers to wonder if it was about to explode.

Now scientists predict that it will disappear almost completely, albeit briefly, on December 12th.

Scientists estimate that an asteroid called 319 Leona will block the view of Betelgeuse from Earth for up to five seconds, just as the moon eclipses the sun.

This will be a chance for astronomers to gather important information about Betelgeuse (pronounced like the Tim Burton character Beetlejuice) that could help scientists understand the birth of planetary systems.

“This is a very exceptional situation. It’s basically a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” astrophysicist Miguel Montargès of the Paris Observatory told Business Insider on Thursday.

Asteroids pass in front of stars all the time. But they are often so large that they completely obscure the star’s light. In the case of 319 Leona, it will be the perfect size to leave a “ring of fire” eclipse visible from Earth.

This means the asteroid will block Betelgeuse’s brightest light but allow some of its brightness to be filtered, allowing some of the star’s fainter features to be visible to Earth-bound observatories.

This is a chance for those who study stellar physics. At this stage, there are no observatories on Earth that can capture this information without the help of the asteroid, Montargès said.

Montargès hopes the occultation may provide clues about how much hot, charged gas is moving around the dying star, a process called the star’s convective cells.

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This is important because it can tell us how planetary systems like ours are born, Montargès said.

“It will tell us what the physics are behind red supergiants and how they start stellar winds,” he added, noting that material from the star could eventually form a new solar system.

Montargès and his colleagues are coordinating a team of around 80 amateur astronomers across Europe who will point their telescopes at the night sky to gather as much information as possible during the event.

“If we study well whether the weather is with us during this campaign, perhaps we can have a visible image of the star’s surface,” Montargès said.

“From this we can extract the properties of convection and determine whether it can participate in the initiation of the stellar wind,” he said.

If you want to take part, you’ll need to be in an extremely narrow path of about 60 kilometers (37 miles) wide that must pass through Southern Europe through Turkey, Greece, Southern Italy, Southern Spain and Portugal before crossing the Atlantic. and we pass the very tip of southern Florida.

You can check if your location is a good place to view the event on the International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA) website.

To see Betelgeuse with the naked eye, locate the first three stars that make up Orion’s Belt. You will then see a reddish star on the left, which is Betelgeuse.

Observers should not expect to see the ring of fire firsthand, because it would require a very powerful telescope to see so much detail in the distant star. But they can participate in scientific discovery by filming the star dimming with their telescopes.

However, to be scientifically useful, you must add a red, green, or blue filter to your observatory and record the event with a camera with an exposure time of no more than 50 milliseconds.

Astronomers must ensure that they record their latitude and longitude precisely, and ideally their recordings are timed to the millisecond. This can be accomplished using a GPS-controlled time locator or using special applications to synchronize footage.

IOTA asks you to share your observations with local groups monitoring the event; you can find them on their website.

Those who won’t be in those areas can also join in on the fun – the Virtual Telescope Project will be streaming the event live online starting at 8pm ET on December 11th.

Correction December 7, 2023: An earlier version of the story incorrectly described Miguel Montargès’ expertise. He is an astrophysicist, not an astronomer.

Read the original article on Business Insider