Thread: The Star
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Old September 18th 15, 10:53 PM posted to uk.sci.astronomy
Alastair McDonald
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Default The Star


"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
On 18/09/2015 10:59, Stephen Wolstenholme wrote:
One of my young carers came in when I was looking at the picture at
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150917.html

She asked what it was and I replied that it was the result of a star
exploding. She replied that it was lucky there are no stars near us. I
pointed at the Sun. Now she is worried about it exploding.


It isn't heavy enough to do that. It will eventually expand to a red giant
and cook the Earth but she'll have to wait about 4bn years...


On the other hand there is a list here of supernova candidates which are
relatively close in astronomical terms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ova_candidates

Betelgeuse, the largest star near us, is due to explode but probably not in
our lifetimes. But, in fact, no one really knows. It could be tomorrow or a
million years in the future.
http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/...xplode-someday

Cheers, Alastair.