Astronomers may have discovered the reason for Betelgeuse’s strange dimness

Astronomers may have discovered the reason for Betelgeuse’s strange dimness

By Claire Cameron Edited by Clara Moskowitz

Astronomers have finally solved one of the strangest mysteries of our night sky: why Betelgeuse, a giant star in the Orion constellation, seems to fade and brighten as if it’s operated by a heavenly dimmer switch.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories, scientists observed Betelgeuse for nearly eight years and found that patterns in the star’s light suggest that another unseen star is passing through its atmosphere.

“It’s like a boat moving on water. The companion star creates a ripple effect in Betelgeuse’s atmosphere that we can actually see in the data,” said Andrea Dupree, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics. Harvard and Smithsonian and lead author of a preprint paper About the discovery that will be published in Astrophysical Journalone in statement,

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The second star appears to pass in front of Betelgeuse about every six years. If the findings are confirmed by follow-up observations, they will help explain why Betelgeuse, a bright, nearby star that can hold 400 million suns inside itself, periodically appears to be on the verge of disappearing before our eyes. This is what happened in 2020: At the time, Betelgeuse appeared so faint that it sparked rumors that it was possibly about to explode in a supernova. (Astronomers, in general, did not think that such a cataclysm was imminent. But they were badly misled.)

scientists had predicted Earlier there existed a companion star, which was called Sivarah. But the evidence was lacking, Dupree said in a recent statement.

“With this new direct evidence, Betelgeuse gives us a front-row seat to see how a massive star changes over time,” she said. “The wake from its companion means we can now understand how such stars evolve, shed material and eventually explode as supernovas.”

This research was presented at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Monday.

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