Betelgeuse, a star 764 times the size of the sun, is in the last stage of its life.  The great star is only 10 million years old is at a milestone of its existence called Red Supergiant. These are dying stars that nearing the end of their evolution and at their largest point. In comparison to most stars, this age is very young, the average being ten times this at a staggering 10 billion years old! Many people may remember the Betelgeuse Great Dimming of 2019. During this year from 2019 - 2020, the star blasted out parts of its core.

The dimming taking place years ago was an explosion of material from the great star. This catastrophic event has caused Betelgeuse to behave in unusual ways. Coronal mass ejections are very common in the sun; however this reaction was something different. The star produced a surface level mass ejection that was 400 billion times greater than the average coronal mass ejection from our sun. Recently the Hubble space telescope has observed the star “wobbling”. This is because the star itself is forcing more mass to fill the gap made by the Betelgeuse ejection.

The star explosion or supernova is expected to be seen during daytime on earth in the next 100,000 years. Many people considered the absolute scale of this upcoming explosion and asked whether it would affect Earth. When asked NASA released a statement saying that by the time the radiation reached Earth it would be too weak to do anything, however if we orbited Betelgeuse, all life would die instantly.

The chances of Betelgeuse exploding in our lifetimes are more than unlikely, the last supernova was spotted in the 17th century and was not expected to reoccur for thousands of years. In generations to come the night sky will be lit up by the supernova created by the star’s end, being one of the brightest spectacles in the night sky.