Gesundheit, Betelgeuse
Astronomers think they’ve worked out why one of the brightest stars in the night sky underwent a dramatic dimming late last year: It’s the result of an enormous cosmic sneeze. The star, Betelgeuse, is some 725 light-years from Earth. Classified as a red supergiant—the largest type of star—it is more than 10 times the mass of our sun. Between fall 2019 and February of this year, Betelgeuse faded to less than half its normal brightness. This prompted speculation that it was about to explode as a supernova, a process in which a star
blasts out bursts of gas and dust. The new research, based on observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, confirms those suspicions, reports Reuters .com. Spurts of dense, hot gas shot through the star’s upper atmosphere, “almost like a sneeze,” says study leader Andrea Dupree, from the HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics. After traveling a few million miles, the cloud of material cooled to form dust—obscuring the star’s light and making it appear dimmer from Earth. That Betelgeuse will eventually blow up is certain. When that will happen, if it hasn’t already, remains unclear.