LightBears

When I was a little girl, I read the Little Prince by Antoine de St Exupery. And in it the little prince said something about that when he died he would just become a star and that we could look for him and see him in the sky. 

My father was an amateur astronomer and would take his telescope out at all hours of the night, 2:00 a.m. 3:00 a.m. what have you, in order to see the transit of a particular planet or star. And he would keep little cryptic notes in a little notebook he carried that would show the longitude and latitude, I assume, since I didn’t understand his math of the path of the transit.

He had a photograph of BETELGEUSE (see below), the red star that is on the left shoulder of the constellation Orion and the photograph was framed and sat in our bathroom on the wall most of my life. He also had a little booklet on different stars and constellations that was available if one was in the bathroom and needed reading material for some reason. 

I fell in LOVE with Betelgeuse!!!

It was the only star that I could reliably pick out in the sky, because Orion, once the autumn equinox had happened here in the northern hemisphere, was the only constellation I really could identify.

(At the time of course I didn’t realize that I needed glasses, which may be why Orion was such a favorite of mine since I really could see him!). And I could tell that Betelgeuse was RED with my naked eyes, which I found very exciting. I couldn’t do that with any other star!

So Betelgeuse became my favorite. And I still have the picture of Betelgeuse on my wall. A sort of memento to my father. 

Sadly, in the last 10 years, Betelgeuse appears to have excited astronomers’ interests by the fact that it is dimming and brightening which they take as a sign that it is close to going supernova – i.e., exploding/imploding and in plain words, DYING (example of a supernova below).

Which could be in a few thousand years or in a few tens of years, they can’t predict. The dimming apparently was its being occluded from vision by dust from matter that it had emitted, and the brightening was that we could see it after the dust had cleared, as well as an increase in the fusion within the star. It’s red because it’s a red giant, and that is because it is a very old star as stars go. It has something to do with the way hydrogen and other matters exist within the core of the star. That’s about what I as a layperson can tell you.

But as a romantic person at heart, I will tell you that I do love Betelgeuse.

And I find it sort of heartbreaking to consider that my favorite star in the whole sky might explode either during my lifetime or in the near-ish future. As we measure future.

So this is just a little small blog to say that when Betelgeuse passes on into its next phase, whether it would become a white dwarf or a black hole, I will feel sorrow even though, because of so much elapsed time, I will no longer be in a physical body to experience that emotion.

I think it’s sad actually that we take it for granted when a star goes supernova. If you’re looking online you will see an article perhaps from a scientific journal, with a remarkable photograph from either the Hubble telescope or the James Webb telescope and that will be that.  Most of us are not scientists, 95% of us probably are not astronomers or even marginally interested in astronomy, and so the passing of a star and I assume the planets associated with it, when it goes supernova, do not get much respect or much notice. 

I do realize that our concerns are much more local, and should be, about the state of our own planet and things like the rainforest

and the oceans and the life within the oceans and the pollinators

and the general state of affairs for our homeless people and poor people

and people who have to flee their countries and so much more,

including drought and crop failures.

I DO totally get that!!

And on an ordinary day that would be my priority to be concerned about. But I just wanted to make a footnote in my blog about Betelgeuse, about stars that go supernova, and about the fact that they’re dead.

We’re not going to hold a funeral for them, no one will put up a headstone for one that passed, no one will sit shiva, etc etc etc. Not even an astronomer, I assume, because to them it’s a piece of exciting data.

But to me, an adult with the heart of a romantic little girl,

the passing of a star is a big deal. And I feel bad knowing that Betelgeuse is not going to be there forever!!!!!

Thanks for listening to me. I appreciate it, I really do. It’s a good thing that I don’t have a lot of followers on this blog because I imagine some people would think I’m a little wonky, to be concerning myself with the death of stars.

I don’t really believe that, though. Because if you’re shopping for a bereavement or sympathy card, sometimes you’ll see cards where reference is made to a new star in the heavens, and that if we look up at the stars we will see our beloved dead.

If we really believe that the souls of our beloved appear as stars in the heavens, then why would we not grieve the passing of a star?

Just a thought…

So… please keep on being the glorious LIGHTBEAR that you are, and I wish you many blessings!!!!