Perhaps in the near future, all citizens of planet Earth will witness a rare event, occurring every few thousand years. According to reports by insiders with the Observatory of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, red giant Betelgeuse rapidly changing shape. Over the past 16 years, the star has lost a round shape, rapidly shrinking into poles, while the equator of the star still held due to the centrifugal force. This is a clear indication that there were few weeks or months to becoming stars in supernova.

Betelgeuse is also known as Orion - one of the brightest stars all familiar constellation of Orion ("hunter"). Like the names of many stars, Betelgeuse is of Arabic origin. The name comes from the phrase "shoulder (or armpit) hunter" - place of this star in the figures of the constellation Orion. As the star Betelgeuse is a massive red supergiant, it is approaching the end of its life and soon it will explode as a supernova.

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, remote from us 600 light-years. The surface of Betelgeuse is colder than the surface of the Sun, and the size is 1000 times more. If you put the star in the center of the Solar system, it will fill the space outside the orbit of Jupiter. On the picture you can see a bright incomprehensible hot spot on the surface of the star.

As will appear this is a rare event from the earth? Suddenly in the sky flashes very bright star. "Very bright" means the degree of brightness, at least equal to the full moon, as a maximum - full sun. Runs like a space show about six weeks, which means more than one and a half months "white nights" in certain parts of the planet, the rest of the people will enjoy two or three extra hours of daylight and magnificent spectacle exploded stars at night.

After two or three weeks after the explosion, the star will start to fade away, and after a few years - will finally turn to the observer in the nebula type crab.

Well, the waves of charged particles after the explosion will come to the Land through several centuries, and the inhabitants of the Earth will receive a small (by 4-5 orders of magnitude less lethal) dose of ionizing radiation. But not to worry anyway, as scientists say, threats to the Earth and its inhabitants, no, but such an event in itself is unique - the last witness observations of supernova explosion on Earth dated to 1054.

The word "Betelgeuse" is of Arabic origin. The history of its origin is unknown, but all experts agree that the second part of the word "algaze" comes from the Arabic "al-Jauza" ( ), so it was called in ancient times the whole constellation of Orion, this was named after the heroine of one of the oldest of the Arabian nights.

Root "DIS" in the word "cause" means "in the middle", thus "cause" can be translated as "Central". Later the word "al-Jauza" was used by Arab astronomers to common signs of the constellations of Orion and the Twins. Even now, when Orion in Arabic is called "al-Jabbar (the Giant), the old name is sometimes still used.

The most common explanation for the full name is a version of an incorrect translation from Arabic into Latin word "poison al causa" (al hand gauzy), that is the name of the constellation Orion. Europeans have mixed Arabic letters Y and B, turning Yad-al-Jauza in Bait-al-Jauza (house gauzy) or even in Bat-al-Jauza (armpit gauzy). The word given to us today Betelgeuse Betelgeuse.

Thus, it turns out that the most common interpretation of the name "hand twin" is not quite true. It's better to translate the name as "the hand that in the middle of the" or "the hand of the Central".

Also of interest are the ancient Chinese version of the name Betelgeuse. In Chinese, it looks and sounds like "Shen-Xue si". So it is in Chinese no longer Chinese as "the Fourth star of the constellation of the three stars". This paradoxical name turned out to be due to the fact that the original Chinese astronomy was "Constellation of three stars", then there is the belt of Orion, but subsequently to it took several nearby stars, but the name for the constellation remains the same...