Betelgeuse and Antares Have Been Observed for Over 2,000 Years. Astronomers can use This to Figure out how old They are - by ScottyJ_PhD
The key candidates for such a study are bright, nearby red supergiant stars visible to the naked eye – meaning they could have been observed and studied before modern telescopic lenses. Some ideal examples include Antares, a variable red supergiant in the constellation of Scorpius, and Betelgeuse , a roughly 10 million-year-old star that is no longer burning hydrogen in its core.
You might be inclined to dismiss historical texts as potentially misleading or inaccurate – besides, a vague description of a star as ‘reddish’ isn’t very scientifically helpful by today’s standards. But the real value of historical documents occurs when ancient writers make comparisons between distinct astronomical objects: Betelgeuse to Saturn, or Antares to Mars, for example.
As an aside, the tradition of calling Saturn ‘the Sun’s star’, as Hyginus does, can be traced as far back as, and may have originated because Saturn’s movement in the sky is the steadiest of all the planets, and its synodic period closely matches the length of the solar year. Hyginus describes Betelgeuse’s color as Saturn-like, which is distinctly not red . This suggests that nearly two thousand years ago, Betelgeuse may not yet have entered its current life stage as a red supergiant.
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