Credit: NASA, ESA, Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI)
Posted on 08/12/2022 10:24:50 AM PDT by BenLurkin
After analyzing data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and several other observatories, astronomers have concluded that the bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse quite literally blew its top in 2019, losing a substantial part of its visible surface and producing a gigantic Surface Mass Ejection (SME). This is something never before seen in a normal star’s behavior.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI)
Our Sun routinely blows off parts of its tenuous outer atmosphere, the corona, in an event known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). However, the Betelgeuse SME blasted off 400 billion times as much mass as a typical CME!
The monster star is still slowly recovering from this catastrophic upheaval.
These new observations yield clues as to how red stars lose mass late in their lives as their nuclear fusion furnaces burn out, before exploding as supernovae. The amount of mass loss significantly affects their fate. However, Betelgeuse’s surprisingly petulant behavior is not evidence the star is about to blow up anytime soon. So the mass-loss event is not necessarily the signal of an imminent explosion.
Even more incredible, the supergiant’s 400-day pulsation rate is now gone, perhaps at least temporarily. For almost 200 years astronomers have measured this rhythm as evident in changes in Betelgeuse’s brightness variations and surface motions. Its disruption attests to the ferocity of the blowout.
TRES and Hubble spectra imply that the outer layers may be back to normal, but the surface is still bouncing like a plate of gelatin dessert as the photosphere rebuilds itself.
(Excerpt) Read more at scitechdaily.com ...
Did it’s head shrink like in the movie?
Betelgeuse should avoid chili.
Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
It’s really a sausage.
Exactly!
The article has several “graphic illustrations,” but no actual Hubble photos.
In case you have not seen this CATASTROPHISM event.
Aw, man - it actually happened 639 years ago and we’re only now finding out about it? Dang astronomers.
Bad news travels fast....
Ford Prefect might have been involved.
The Titanic sank in 1912. Betelgeuse is much too far away for anything that happened on the Titanic to have affected it yet.
Thanks glee’, was working on the ping message in another window.
Totally not guilty.
Or at least eligible for a Clintonian post-POTUS pardon!
Betelgeuse is one of the few stars I can identify by its location.
In the Orion constellation, Betelgeuse is the hunter’s right shoulder (left from your perspective). And it’s distinctly red.
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