DEAR OLD BETELGEUSE

My friend told me about the quadrantid meteor shower tonight. The skies were clear and cold; the stars bright, so I thought I’d venture out and see some shooting stars for myself.

She was right! Somewhere between the horizon and the lowest star of the ‘Question Mark’ pan-handle, bits of debris sparked into streaks of light in the atmosphere. They’re so fast; like lightning. And the more I looked, the more there were!

I stood there in the freezing allotments for a while. It’s the best place: the park isn’t all that safe, and the middle of the allotments is far enough from street lamps to let you see more once your eyes have adjusted. I didn’t think anyone would be passing through at that time of night.

It was so cold. The icy wind rattled the upturned lemonade bottles on top of bean-stalks, and an old jacket flapped against the wooden fence it had been hung upon. Leaves rustled. Quadrantids zipped silently across the northern sky.

It’s great to look up and see the stars. All that light from so far away; long gone constellations whose radiance crosses the galaxy to find us, while their sources dimmed and died, centuries and centuries ago.

That reminded me. I span around to find Orion. If the Question Mark (the upturned plough of Ursa Major) is in the North, then Orion is opposite in the South by winter, right where I’d left him last week disappearing behind the trees.

I was looking for Betelgeuse. That’s the star of Orion’s left shoulder. It’s a red giant, normally very bright, very distinctive, but recently it’s been dimming; I wanted to see it. Especially after I looked it up in ‘Stars and Planets’ the other day.

There it was - still visible, still tiny, twinkling, and red. Good old Betelgeuse. They think it’s about to go supernova. Stars like that eventually run out of fuel and collapse under their own gravity. If Betelgeuse implodes into a supernova it will be brighter than the moon. But nobody’s exactly sure when in the next 10,000 years that will be. It’s the big news in astronomy at the moment.

I peered at Betelgeuse through the cosmos. 600 light years away it twinkled back. Time is different, I thought, when you can’t travel faster than light. That tiny twinkling star is as big as the sun if the sun could swell to the orbit of Jupiter. It’s also probably not actually there any more. That messes with my head a bit. It still twinkled happily.

I watched more quadrantids, thinking about how cool it would be if the sky behind me lit up with the brilliant end, the great swan song, of Betelgeuse. It happened to Kepler in 1604! Why couldn’t it happen to me?

Well it wasn’t the moment for serendipity. It was the moment to bid Orion goodnight and go indoors to get warm. Goodnight Alnitak and Bellatrix. Goodnight brilliant Rigel and Saiph, and Mintaka. And goodnight, dear old Betelgeuse. I wonder when I’ll see you next.