Betelgeuse - the hand of Orion. (o0O-PLaCiD-O0o)

Betelgeuse - the hand of Orion.

Betelgeuse - the hand of Orion.

This 10 million year old red supergiant lies a mere 640 light years away (that's 3,762 trillion miles). If this massive star was at the center of our solar system, it would engulf our sun, all four inner planets, and the asteroid belt. Its surface would even stretch to parts of Jupiter's orbit.

Interesting fact... given that Betelgeuse is only 640 light years from us, if there was a hypothetical creature on a hypothetical planet orbiting Betelgeuse that was capable of looking at Earth through its own telescope, they would be seeing life on earth in the year 1375. They would be completely unaware of our modern technology.

Here's something else I've often wondered about... (Strap on your thinking caps) Let's use the current subject matter, Betelgeuse. Being that it lies 640 light years away, if you were to travel to the imaginary planet orbiting Betelgeuse at a rate of, say, half the speed of light (easy guys, this is hypothetical) it would take you 1280 years to get there, right? Now take into account what I stated above, about the viewable light on either side of the journey being 640 years old. Then imagine keeping a scope visually trained on the planet orbiting Betelgeuse during your journey towards it. (Here's where it starts to get confusing for me) In order to "make things jive" at the end of your journey, you will have had to visually witness a total of 1920 years of time during your 1280 year journey (the 1280 actual years of travel, as well as the 640 year original gap in light travel). Would this mean that as you are travelling towards this imaginary planet, that you would be witnessing the imaginary life unfold at a pace of 1.5 times its normal rate? Or is there another physics-related answer to this dilemna that I haven't grasped yet?

*** Again, thanks for listening... what a great audience.

***

Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T3i (600D), unmodified

Scope: William Optics GTF81 Triplet - "Stella"

Focal Specs: 535mm, f/6.6

Settings: ISO 1600, 9 sec exp

Mount: AstroTrac TT320X-AG

41 lights, 27 darks, 18 bias, stacked in DSS

Processed with Photoshop CS5

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Mix of multiple sources
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