On average, Antares is the fifteenth-brightest star in the night sky. It looks like an orange-red gem at the heart of the scorpion. Tonight, though, it looks a little feeble. It hasn’t gotten any fainter. Instead, it stands especially close to the almost-full Moon. It looks a little washed out in the powerful moonlight.

Antares really is one of the more impressive stars in the galaxy. It’s probably 12 to 15 times the Sun’s mass, hundreds of times the Sun’s diameter, and tens of thousands of times its brightness.

Ere long – at least on the astronomical timescale – Antares will get even more impressive – but only for a while. Sometime in the next million years or so, it’s expected to blast itself apart in a titanic explosion – a supernova. For a few months, it’ll shine brighter than the combined glow of billions of normal stars.

As it fades, its demolished outer layers will form a nebula – a colorful cloud of gas and dust, energized by the blast and by the decay of radioactive elements. Over thousands of years, the nebula will expand and fade. That will leave only the star’s dead core – a tiny, super-dense corpse known as a neutron star – the almost-invisible remnant of the mighty heart of the scorpion.

Antares stands close to the Moon at nightfall, and the Moon will move closer to it during the night – washing out this brilliant star.

We’ll have more about the Moon tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield