Betelgeuse

After taking the garbage and recycling to the curb side tonight I found myself once again standing in my driveway with the house lights turned off, an open can of Sprite in my hands and my head craned skyward to gaze at the celestial lights. I turned my attention to Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse is something like 425 light years away, meaning it takes light from that star approximately 425 years to reach my eyes. It boggles my mind to think that what I am seeing when I look up at the stars is a snapshot of the past. Think about it. Light travels at 186,300 miles per second. Given that, it takes about 1.5 seconds for light from the Moon to reach my eyes and our Sun is about 8.5 minutes away at the speed of light.

Betelgeuse is a red super giant, meaning that it is nearing the end of its life as a star, and one day it will explode as a supernova. Considering the amount of time that light from Betelgeuse takes to reach earth, if the star had already exploded we would not even be aware of it as we are still seeing how it looked 425 years ago. Bizarre.