At the beginning of 2020, the world held its collective breath as a nearby behemoth star, called Betelgeuse, start to dramatically fade. Could this mean the star is about to go supernova? With the recent flutter of news activity settling down, we are now finally starting to understand what might have really happened. Today, we take a deep dive into what makes massive stars like this tick, and then get into how we might have now finally come up with answers to this bizarre event.

An educational video written and presented by Prof. David Kipping.

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Chapters
0:00 Teaser
0:53 Massive Stars
7:07 Dying Massive Stars
12:47 Dimming 2020
17:36 Explaining the Dimming

References
► Fuller, J. & Ro, S., 2018, "Pre-supernova outbursts via wave heating in massive stars - II. Hydrogen-poor stars", MNRAS 476, 1853: https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.04251
► Dimming plots come from @betelbot (  / betelbot  ) Twitter account run by Michael Hippke, which collates AAVSO data.
► Gerhz, R. et al., 2020, "Betelgeuse remains steadfast in the infrared", Astronomer's Telegram #13518: http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?r...
► Sukhbold, T. & Adams, A., 2019, "Missing Red Supergiants and Carbon Burning", MNRAS 492, 2578: https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.00474
► Dolan, M. et al. 2020, "Evolutionary tracks for Betelgeuse", ApJ 819, 7: https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.3143
► Adams, S. et al., 2017, "The search for failed supernovae with the Large Binocular Telescope: confirmation of a disappearing star", MNRAS 468, 4968: https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.01283
► Levesque, E. & Massey, P., 2020, "Betelgeuse Just Isn't That Cool: Effective Temperature Alone Cannot Explain the Recent Dimming of Betelgeuse", arXiv preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.10463

Videos used:
► Simulation of forming protostars by Matthew Bate, The UK Astrophysics Fluid Facility, University of Leicester: https://www.ukaff.ac.uk/starcluster/
► Planet formation animation by Zhaohuan Zhu, Princeton:    • Science Today: Simulating Solar Syste...  
► Animation of a white dwarf by VideoFromSpace:    • White Dwarf Star Collects Planet Debr...  
► Core collapse supernova animation by Kuo-Chuan Pan:    • Core-collapse supernova simulation  
► Animation of the Sun becoming a giant, credit ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen): https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso...
► Animation of a giant star, credit ESO/M. Kornmesser https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso...
► Supernova animation, credit NASA/CXC/A.Hobart:    • Animation of Supernova Producing a Bl...  
► Neutron star collapsing animation, credit NASA/CXC/A.Hobart:    • Animation of Supernova Producing a Bl...  
► Sunspsot rotating into view video by NASA/SDO: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12292#87449
► Hot iron video by Aaron Walsh, "Iron Born - An Artist Blacksmith":    • Iron Born - An Artist Blacksmith  
► KDIST grabulation video courtesy of NSO/NSF/AURA: https://www.nso.edu/telescopes/dkist/...
► Betelgeuse convection animations by Bernd Freytag: https://www.astro.uu.se/~bf/movie/dst...
► Betelgeuse convection animation downgrade by Brendan Drachler
(@BrendanDrachler): https://twitter.com/BrendanDrachler/s...
► Coronal mass ejection video from NASA/SDO:    • Aug. 31, 2012 Coronal Mass Ejection  
► "What will it look like when Betelgeuse Goes Supernova" by V101 Science:    • What Will It Look Like When Betelgeus...  
► ESO dome supernova animation 2 and 3: https://supernova.eso.org/news/videos... and
https://supernova.eso.org/news/videos...
► Sun forming animation by Bob Stanford:    • Creation of the Solar System Animation  

Images used:
► Interferometric images by NASA/ESO/M. Montarges et al.
► HD 12545 images by K.Strassmeier, Vienna, NOAO/AURA/NSF: https://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/ht...
► Betelgeuse dust wave/bow shocock image courtesy of ESA/Herschel/PACS/L. Decin: http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploratio...
► Thumbnail image is an artist's impression of NGC 1068, credit to NRAO/AUI/NSF, D. Berry/Skyworks: https://public.nrao.edu/news/2016-smb...

TV/Movie clips used:
► Sunshine (2007) Fox Searchlight Pictures
► How the Universe Works (2018) Pioneer Productions

All music used is licensed by SoundStripe.com/Creative Commons:
► Cylinder Seven, Cylinder Five & Cylinder Two (http://chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/) by Chris Zabriskie; licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
► "Waking Up" by Atlas, licensed through SoundStripe.com: https://app.soundstripe.com/songs/3984
► Music from Neptune Flux, "Stories About the World That Once Was" by Chris Zabriskie (http://chriszabriskie.com/neptuneflux/); licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license
► "Selha" by Stephen Keech, licensed through SoundStripe.com: https://app.soundstripe.com/songs/7102

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