Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse's Enigmatic Environment

The red supergiant star Betelgeuse is seen here in a new view from the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation.

Orion, the famous hunter presiding over northern winter skies, may experience a stellar crash in its future. The red star at its shoulder, Betelgseeu, appears to be set to collide with a dusty "wall" in 5,000 years
Betelgeuse is surrounded by a clumpy envelope of material in its immediate vicinity. The arcs to the left are material ejected from the star as it evolved into a red supergiant, and were shaped by its bow shock interaction with the interstellar medium. A faint linear bar of dust is illuminated at left, and may represent a dusty filament connected to the local galactic magnetic field, or the edge of an interstellar cloud. If so, then Betelgeuse’s motion across the sky implies that the arcs will hit the wall in 5,000 years time, with the star itself colliding with the wall 12,500 years later. Roughly 1,000 times the diameter of our sun and shining 100,000 times more brightly, Betelgeuse is likely on its way to a spectacular supernova explosion. It has already swelled into a red supergiant and shed a significant fraction of its outer layers.