Betelgeuse seen by Hubble Space Telescope

 Supernova 1987A

The star Betelgeuse is a good supernova candidate about 520 light years distant. I think this is uncomfortably close, but for some real excitement, I would put the limit at about 10 - 50 light years. Because once a star explodes, after thousands of years it has produced a vast bubble of ionized and x-ray emitting gas that can measure hundreds of light years across. Anything inside would be bathed for 100s of thousands of years by enhanced fluxes of cosmic rays and x-rays. Although I do not have the numbers in front of me, I can imagine that kind of environment, inside the solar system, being like a bad period of solar activity, but lasting thousands of years. This would make interplanetary space travel hazardous without the proper shielding...which is expensive. There would be decades and centuries when the many filaments and other irregularities in the supernova ejecta pass through the solar system and make interplanetary travel possibly lethal.

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