Talk:Red supergiant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is missing a clear characterization of red supergiants versus mere red giants. 22:35, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Computer generated images
I just added a note to one of the images to clarify it's not a photo. Also, the next one of our Sun is quite inaccurate, as Celestia in its latest builds (1.5) that I believe this one was generated with now use possibly untweaked halo effects to simulate brightness not possible to achieve with a computer monitor. Our Sun would not have nearly that great of a halo in the "real world", and would look just like a ordinary star, much like Betelgeuse looks from our point of view. Actually, our Sun from there would obviously be even dimmer and harder to spot than that as it's no supergiant. -- Northgrove 10:22, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
- I'd personally be interested in replacing the Celestia Betelgeuse image with this one (click for QuickTime movie too) as it looks far more accurate than what is actually just a textured sphere with a halo effect, but I'm not sure about our rights for this at this point. -- Northgrove 10:43, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
- Since the Celestia images provide a misleading comparison, I have removed them and put an actual image of a red supergiant in their place, as this article was lacking for real images. Chaos syndrome 16:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Extreme pressure?
A red supergiant like Betelgeuse is ~15 times heavier than the Sun and many hundred times larger in diameter. Its average density thus is ten thousand times less than than of the air we breathe. So where does "the extreme pressure in a red supergiant" come from?
Since the mass of a red giant is heavily concentrated towards its center, the pressures near its center are much higher than they would be if its mass were uniformly distributed. Cardamon 07:34, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
