![]() ![]() When the star ejected this large amount of hot material comprised of gases, the material cooled as it reached the star’s outer layers and formed a dust cloud that blocked starlight from about a quarter of the star’s surface. The superheated plasma was released from the star through a large convection cell, like hot bubbles rising in boiling water – except hundreds of times the size of our sun. New photos show Betelgeuse star's unprecedented dimming When compared with the image taken in December 2019, it shows how much the star has faded and how its apparent shape has changed. This stunning image of the star's surface was taken with the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope in January 2019, before the star started to dim. The red supergiant star Betelgeuse, in the constellation of Orion, has been undergoing unprecedented dimming. It returned to its normal brightness by April. It was the faintest the star had been since measurements of it began 150 years ago.Īstronomers thought it might signify that Betelgeuse may be about to explode in a supernova and continued observing the star. But then, its brightness dipped by two-thirds and the change was visible to the naked eye. Because they’ve observed it so much, the scientists expect it to go through a dimming and brightening cycle every 420 days.īut Betelgeuse caught the attention of astronomers around the world in the fall of 2019 when it began to dim unexpectedly and continued to fade through February. The star has fascinated astronomers for a long time. It gives us a rare opportunity to study what happens to stars like this before they explode.”Īs Betelgeuse burns through fuel in its core, it has swollen to massive proportions. It’s still a really big deal when a supernova goes off. “We could be looking at around 100,000 years before an explosion happens. “It’s burning helium in its core at the moment, which means it’s nowhere near exploding,” said Meridith Joyce, lead study author and postdoctoral fellow at The Australian National University, in a statement. They were able to model the star’s pulsing and found they were essentially pressure waves, or sound waves, that caused the pulsations. These dimming events occurred due to dust clouds and pulsations of the star, according to the researchers. The bright star since late 2019 experienced two significant drops in brightness, which caused some astronomers to believe that the red giant star was nearing the end and could explode. Montargès et al.īetelgeuse, the curiously dimming star, may be covered in giant star spots When compared with the image taken in January 2019, it shows how much the star has faded and how its apparent shape has changed. This stunning image of the star's surface, taken with the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope late last year, is among the first observations to come out of an observing campaign aimed at understanding why the star is becoming fainter. ![]() So when will Betelgeuse experience a supernova? It may not happen for another 100,000 years, according to the researchers. However, the researchers estimated this is still plenty of distance between the star and Earth to protect our planet from sustaining significant impacts when the star eventually explodes. The size allowed the researchers to determine its distance from Earth at 530 light-years away, which is 25% closer than scientists previously thought, said László Molnár, study coauthor and research fellow at the Konkoly Observatory in Budapest, Hungary. This gives the red giant a radius 750 times that of our sun. Previous studies suggested the star was bigger than the orbit of Jupiter, but the new study results have shown that Betelgeuse is only about two-thirds that size. Hubble spies the culprit behind Betelgeuse star's dimming. This artist's impression was generated using an image of Betelgeuse from late 2019 taken with the SPHERE instrument on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. New observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope suggest that the unexpected dimming of the supergiant star Betelgeuse was most likely caused by an immense amount of hot material that was ejected into space, forming a dust cloud that blocked starlight coming from the star's surface. ![]()
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