Eta Carinae is acting up again!

[Shpaget]

Observations suggest that GRBs are highly directional events which are focused in a ray between 2 and 20 degrees, so even if a star goes supernova near Earth, it doesn't mean that Earth will get hit by GRB since it can, and usually does miss us.
Too bad Vega is pointing in our direction :lol:
It is not traveling away from us. It's approaching, if my math and research skills serve me right, at 19 km/s, meaning that it will be closest to us in aprox. 300 000 years.

Since it will probably live for another 300 000 000 years or more, there is no reason to be afraid of it. There will be a lot more light years between us by that time.

 

[silylene]

Vega's closest approach is 210K years from now , and then it will be the brightest star in the sky (I posted this earlier, maybe I wasn't clear enough). But I don't think Vega will blow for another few hundred million years, given its young age and the typical lifetime for a star that size. Hopefully by then it will have moved way beyond us.

 

[grokme]

Vega's closest approach is 210K years from now , and then it will be the brightest star in the sky (I posted this earlier, maybe I wasn't clear enough). But I don't think Vega will blow for another few hundred million years, given its young age and the typical lifetime for a star that size. Hopefully by then it will have moved way beyond us.

Oh no you were clear. I read 300k instead of 300m and didn't make the connection that is was moving towards us.

 

[R1]

There are apparently Six hundred million stars within 5,000 lys of the Sun:
(Maybe there will be a lot more fireworks os some kind of nearby activity soon.)

(source: atlasoftheuniverse at:
http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/5000lys.html )

 

[docm]

GRB = Gamma-ray burst, so no, it's not visible.

Unless there is nitrogen fluorescence or Cherenkov radiation caused by a particle cascade impacting the atmosphere or the water droplets in clouds. Not to mention the potential for a global aurora caused by high altitude ionization.

 

[grokme]

The Crab Nebula went off about a thousand years ago and is 6,500 light years away. So I'm assuming we weren't in the blast zone, or do we have a record of the GRB reaching Earth from it?

 

[MeteorWayne]

The light (and all other electromagnetic radiation) from the Crab Nebula reached us the same time, about 1000 years ago (in 1054 AD)

There are no records of anything other than visual observations from then, since telescopes, and all other forms of detectors at other wavelengths did not exist then.

The records are strictly those from what people saw.

 

[grokme]

Oh, I was wondering about levels of radiation from the soil at that time. Has anyone ever done a geological study to see what effects it had? Also, there's a petroglyph from the Anasazi from that time recording the Crab Nebula. I wonder what effects it might have had on crops, etc....

 

[MeteorWayne]

All that reached us was basically light, so there woulkd be no other effects whatsoever.

 

[crazyeddie]

I'd be more worried about Vega . It is slightly variable, currently only 25 LY away, its proper motion is moving closer to us, and its pole points almost right at us (5 degrees off of a direct line of sight). In 200K years, Vega will become the brightest star in the sky. It is fusing very fast on the CNO cycle, and has perhaps only about 300M more years before it goes boom. By the way, Vega is thought to have planets.

(However, don't worry too much, most likely, Vega will have moved way past us by the time it goes boom.)

Vega has only about 2.6 times the mass of our sun. I don't think that's enough to end it's life as a supernova. It will puff off most of it's outer atmosphere when it becomes a red giant and only if the core exceeds 1.4 stellar masses could it "go boom". I was under the impression that when speaking of single stars (not binaries), only spectral class O and B stars can go supernova......Vega is type A.

 

[grokme]

All that reached us was basically light, so there woulkd be no other effects whatsoever.

So lessons learned from the Crab Nebula could be applied to Eta Carinae. In other words, we have nothing to worry about. I know you've said this. I was just looking for a way to back it up with an example from the past.

 

[robnissen]

All that reached us was basically light, so there woulkd be no other effects whatsoever.

So lessons learned from the Crab Nebula could be applied to Eta Carinae. In other words, we have nothing to worry about.

Yes and no. It is most likely that when Eta Carinae explodes, it will have no more impact on earth than did the supernovae that created the Crab Nebula. But if we are lined up with the poles of EC (which we may be due to the fact it is in a binary system), we could get a whole bunch of crap hurled at us that wouldn't do the earth much good, but wouldn't destroy it either.