Betelgeuse is a nearby supergiant that will eventually explode into a supernova. At peak brightness, the supernova will have a luminosity of about 20 billion times the Sun. It is 600 lightyears away. All stellar brightnesses are compared with Vega, which has an intrinsic luminosity of about 60 times the sun, a distance of 25 lightyears away, an absolutely magnitude of 0.6 and an apparent magnitude of 0. a) At peak brightness, how many times brighter will betelgeuses be than Vega? b) Approximately what apparent magnitude does this correspond to? c) The sun is about -26.5 apparent magnitude. What fraction of the Sun'ss brightness will Betelgeuse be?
Stellar evolution
We may see thousands of stars in the dark sky. Our universe consists of billions of stars. Stars may appear tiny to us but they are huge balls of gasses. Sun is a star of average size. Some stars are even a thousand times larger than the sun. The stars do not exist forever they have a certain lifetime. The life span of the sun is about 10 billion years. The star undergoes various changes during its lifetime, this process is called stellar evolution. The structure of the sun-like star is shown below.
Red Shift
It is an astronomical phenomenon. In this phenomenon, increase in wavelength with corresponding decrease in photon energy and frequency of radiation of light. It is the displacement of spectrum of any kind of astronomical object to the longer wavelengths (red) side.
Betelgeuse is a nearby supergiant that will eventually explode into a supernova. At peak brightness, the supernova will have a luminosity of about 20 billion times the Sun. It is 600 lightyears away. All stellar brightnesses are compared with Vega, which has an intrinsic luminosity of about 60 times the sun, a distance of 25 lightyears away, an absolutely magnitude of 0.6 and an apparent magnitude of 0.
a) At peak brightness, how many times brighter will betelgeuses be than Vega?
b) Approximately what apparent magnitude does this correspond to?
c) The sun is about -26.5 apparent magnitude. What fraction of the Sun'ss brightness will Betelgeuse be?
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