Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse! Betel-- BOOM!

[glappkaeft]

If this event happened today, would our current technologies detect it as it happened? For instance, would we detect the neutrino burst or would some radio or x-ray telescope sky survey detect it automatically, or would we need someone to serendipidously happen to be looking at the correct part of the sky ?

Swift is built to detect nearby supernovas among other things but can't cover the entire sky. The Supernova Early Warning System (SNEWS) uses neutrino detectors to give heads up that a supernova is occurring, in fact it would detects it even before we can see the light, but can't give directional data. I could not find any extinction data for G1.9+0.3 (but lots of "woo" - any search phrases with "G1.9+0.3" + extinction results in mountains of it) but in the direction of the milky way core extinction can be up to 30 magnitudes (about 1 photon out of one trillion get through) in visual light. This would dim even a very bright SN to the equivalent of absolute magnitude of around +10. At 25'000 LY this would be only an apparent magnitude of +24.4. While this is detectable it's very hard to spot a new 24.4 magnitude "star" and I doubt that good measurements can be taken with such a weak signal. In this case one would have to hope that Swift pinpoints the location so that the SN can be studied in radio/IR and X-Ray wavelengths

[PraedSt]

Are you suggesting that there might be something about the light curve that is indicative of whether or not it is about to blow? If so, what do you think we should look for?

I was hoping

But here's a curve of a recurrent nova, RS Oph:
http://www.aavso.org/lcg/plot?auid=0...=&mean=&vmean=
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anything there that's an obvious sign of impending change.

[dgavin]

Updated light curves for Betelguese.

AAVSO.ORG light curve generator

It looks to have started this group of mesurments back at previous levels, but them jumped back up to its almost brightest level again. While it doesn't look any more likely to blow up yet, it does appear that it may be developing some new variabilitiy.

[Glom]

Would these be the convulsions?

[dgavin]

It's possible, but I think a few more years of light curves would be needed to make any sort of educated determination.