Sharing this because a) super cool and b) THERE’S A FREAKING STAR CALLED BETELGUESE!!! THIS IS AMAZING!
Betelguese was where Zaphod Beeblebrox and Ford Prefect were from in Hithhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s one of the armpits basically of the Orion Constellation.
OK LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT BETELGEUSE BECAUSE THIS FUCKER IS MY FAVORITE STAR
This fucker doesn’t stay one size NO, that’s too boring for good ol’ Betelgeuse! It varies in apparent magnitude from 0.0 to 1.3, which is fucking ridiculous. We can’t even accurately measure what the fuck is going on with this piece of shit because it keeps changing shape and size. Sometimes this piece of shit is the 6th fucking brightest star in the sky; sometimes it’s fucking only in twentieth place. Plus it’s covered by a cloud of its own shit making it hard to see what the fuck is going on inside.
Also, this asshole is flying through space at supersonic speed, fucking 30km/s. An object large enough to engulf our solar system out to JUPITER is flying at thirty fucking kilometers per second, that fucking asshole. This has caused Betelgeuse to be create a god damned bow wave in space as it’s zooming away from the cluster of stars where it was born.
HOWEVER…
Don’t expect to see it go supernova any time soon. It’s going to die “relatively soon” in astronomical terms, with the current prediction being somewhere in the next 100,000 years. Yeah… you’re probably not gonna be alive for that.
