Latest news with #GreatDimming
CNN
3 days ago
- Science
- CNN
Betelgeuse, one of the most familiar stars in the sky, may have a hidden companion star orbiting it
Astronomers have observed what they believe to be a never-before-seen companion star orbiting Betelgeuse, a pulsating red supergiant star in the shoulder of the Orion constellation. One of the best known and most luminous stars in the night sky, Betelgeuse has long intrigued anyone who has gazed up and seen its reddish tint, which is visible to the naked eye. What has most fascinated astronomers, however, is that its brightness has been known to change over time. Now, they think the newly detected celestial object may hold the key to understanding Betelgeuse's varying brightness. From late 2019 to the beginning of 2020, Betelgeuse dimmed so sharply that astronomers thought the star was on the brink of exploding in a supernova. Since the event, called the 'Great Dimming,' teams of astronomers have determined that the star ejected a large dust cloud, which temporarily blocked some of its light from Earth's perspective. The Great Dimming led to an increased interest in solving longstanding mysteries about one of the cosmos' most observed stars — such as why its brightness appears to fluctuate regularly over a six-year cycle and has for decades. A team of astronomers has now discovered an explanation. Using an instrument on the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, they employed an unusual imaging technique to get a glimpse of a suspected companion star, colloquially called 'Betelbuddy,' that builds on a previous theory. They suggest calling the star Siwarha, or 'her bracelet,' an Arabic name befitting the companion to Betelgeuse, which means 'Hand of the Giant.' ('Elgeuse' is also the historic Arabic name of the Orion constellation.) Understanding more about the dynamic between Betelgeuse and its companion star, also referred to as Ori B in a new study published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, could shed light on the entwined fate of both stars. As a supergiant star, Betelgeuse is immense. Compared with our sun, it's about 700 times the radius and contains 18 times as much mass, said lead study author Steve Howell, a senior research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in California. If our sun were replaced with Betelgeuse, the star would not only engulf Earth and all the inner planets but reach past the orbit of Jupiter, according to NASA. It also shines 7,500 to 14,000 times as bright as the sun. At 10 million years old, Betelgeuse is a fraction of the age of our sun, which is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. However, Betelgeuse's enormousness means it has already burned through all the hydrogen at its core, causing it to expand as it nears the end of its life. Years of observations have shown that its luminosity varies periodically about every 416 days, growing fainter and then brighter. This pulsation is typical of red supergiant stars. But Betelgeuse displays an unusual pattern on top of that. 'It has been noted for decades that Betelgeuse also shows a much longer period (of variation) of about 2,170 days (about six years) which remained unexplained,' Howell wrote in an email. Two independent groups of astronomers published papers in 2024 suggesting that an unseen companion star could cause the variability. The Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, however, could see no evidence of such a star. Betelgeuse's size and brightness have posed challenges to attempts to spot a companion. To see both Betelgeuse and its companion, an image has to be both high-resolution and high-contrast, said Jared Goldberg, a research fellow at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics. Goldberg authored a November study suggesting Betelgeuse may have a companion star, but he was not involved with the new research. 'Normally, the Earth's atmosphere makes it hard to do this for the same reason that stars twinkle — the moving gas in the atmosphere scatters the starlight around,' Goldberg said. Howell's team decided to use a speckle imager called 'Alopeke, which means 'fox' in Hawaiian, to search for the companion. 'Speckle imaging is a technique that obtained many thousands of very short exposures of an astronomical object,' Howell said. 'These images are so short that they do not look like stars or galaxies at all, but a blob of 'speckles.'' The speckles are due to distortions from Earth's atmosphere. The thousands of brief images are processed in a way that removes the atmospheric blurring, resulting in a high-resolution telescope image, Howell said. When members of Howell's team observed Betelgeuse during the Great Dimming in 2020, they didn't see anything; the companion was likely obscured behind Betelgeuse, according to Goldberg. But in December, they spied a faint blue glow exactly where Goldberg's research — as well as another study authored by Morgan MacLeod at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics — predicted the companion would be. The speckle imaging revealed a young, bluish star that isn't burning hydrogen at its core yet and only has a mass of 1.5 times that of the sun. The companion star's faintness — four-tenths of one percent as bright as Betelgeuse — is just one reason it's been hard to spot, Howell said. The other is the stars' proximity to one another — only about four times the distance between Earth and the sun separates them. On average, the Earth is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away from the sun. The thing that allows the companion star to be seen, said Goldberg, is that it is a different hue than Betelgeuse. 'If the two headlights on a car represent the two stars, our view from Earth to Betelgeuse and its companion would be the same as trying to separate the two car headlights with your eye from a distance of 50,000 miles,' Howell said. 'Our observations were aided by the fact that we can directly observe Betelgeuse using very short exposures (14 milliseconds each) so as to not saturate our cameras and the large mirror size of Gemini (8 meters) allows us to obtain very high angular resolutions in images of the sky, enough resolution to separate the two stars.' It's the first time a stellar companion has been detected orbiting a supergiant star so closely, the study authors said. 'I was surprised that the companion was so obvious immediately after our data was processed,' Howell said. 'I was thinking it'd be hard to find, but boom, it was right there.' MacLeod, a postdoctoral fellow in theoretical astrophysics and member of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, worked on research published in December that collected historical measurements of Betelgeuse's radial velocity, or motion toward or away from Earth, that began around 1896 on photographic glass plates. The team saw a repeating six-year pattern consistent with the tug of a smaller, orbiting companion star, MacLeod said. 'Putting these lines of evidence, collected from a century of astronomical measurements, together let us predict right where a companion 'should be' if it were real,' he said. 'But we hadn't seen it directly. Howell and his team made a pioneering observation in order to be able to make this initial detection.' MacLeod, who was not involved with the new study, calls its finding 'an amazing result … that shows that even the best-studied stars in our night sky have mysteries to reveal.' 'Because this was such a challenging detection to make, the observations are on the very edge of detection,' MacLeod said. 'What pushed this over the edge is that the star appeared just where we expected when we pulled together the predictions of a century's worth of astronomers.' While the discovery of the companion aligns with Goldberg's research predictions, future observations are still needed to confirm the detection. Speckle imaging is a hard measurement to make and isn't always accurate, Goldberg said. Given that the star was discovered near the limits of the instrument, its presence is probable but 'not yet a slam dunk,' said Edward Guinan, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. Guinan has studied Betelgeuse but was not involved in the new research. However, seeing the companion star track along its proposed six-year orbit would represent a definitive detection of the companion, Guinan said. 'Currently, we think the companion is moving away from us, and going behind Betelgeuse. So there is a clear path to confirm the new study's results: Look again when we expect the companion to be fully behind Betelgeuse, and it will be gone. Look once more when it should be coming back around on the other side, and it should be there,' Goldberg said. A new opportunity to confirm the companion's presence with telescopes will occur in November 2027 when the star would be at its farthest distance from Betelgeuse, making it easier to spot. Like MacLeod's team, Goldberg and his colleagues also determined that Betelgeuse wobbles toward and away from Earth within the same six-year period due to the presence of a stellar companion. Still, questions remain about how exactly a companion star is contributing to Betelgeuse's six-year variability, which appears to be connected to changes in dust around the star, Goldberg said. 'The dimmer phase happens when the companion is behind Betelgeuse, and the brighter phase is when the companion is in front of Betelgeuse,' Goldberg said by email. 'This means it's the opposite of an eclipse, so it seems most likely that Betelgeuse is producing its own dust and the companion is shaping it, rather than dragging it along.' About 30% of pulsating red giant and supergiant stars show the same type of variability, and if that means a companion is present, 'then many more stars harbor these little friends,' Goldberg added. 'Understanding this stellar pair can help us understand the population of things like it. And understanding that population will teach us about star and planet formation in systems that are otherwise extremely hard to observe.' Meanwhile, astronomers still wonder when Betelgeuse will explode, a catastrophic event that has been anticipated since the Great Dimming. While Betelgeuse and its companion star were likely born at the same time, the companion is still forming as a normal star, Howell said. But companion's close orbit, within the outer layers of Betelgeuse's atmosphere, will be its doom, he said. One of two things will happen. The companion star's orbit may cause it to drift slowly closer and plunge into Betelgeuse in about 10,000 years. 'At that point Betelgeuse and its companion will enter into an eternal hug,' Goldberg said. 'If we can get decades of precise direct observations, we might be able to directly test that prediction by seeing if the orbit is shrinking, and if so how quickly.' But if Betelgeuse explodes before that — 'maybe tomorrow, maybe in 100 years' — then the companion star will be destroyed in the supernova, Howell said. 'The future is not good for either star.' Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
CNN
3 days ago
- Science
- CNN
Betelgeuse, one of the most familiar stars in the sky, may have a hidden companion star orbiting it
Astronomers have observed what they believe to be a never-before-seen companion star orbiting Betelgeuse, a pulsating red supergiant star in the shoulder of the Orion constellation. One of the best known and most luminous stars in the night sky, Betelgeuse has long intrigued anyone who has gazed up and seen its reddish tint, which is visible to the naked eye. What has most fascinated astronomers, however, is that its brightness has been known to change over time. Now, they think the newly detected celestial object may hold the key to understanding Betelgeuse's varying brightness. From late 2019 to the beginning of 2020, Betelgeuse dimmed so sharply that astronomers thought the star was on the brink of exploding in a supernova. Since the event, called the 'Great Dimming,' teams of astronomers have determined that the star ejected a large dust cloud, which temporarily blocked some of its light from Earth's perspective. The Great Dimming led to an increased interest in solving longstanding mysteries about one of the cosmos' most observed stars — such as why its brightness appears to fluctuate regularly over a six-year cycle and has for decades. A team of astronomers has now discovered an explanation. Using an instrument on the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, they employed an unusual imaging technique to get a glimpse of a suspected companion star, colloquially called 'Betelbuddy,' that builds on a previous theory. They suggest calling the star Siwarha, or 'her bracelet,' an Arabic name befitting the companion to Betelgeuse, which means 'Hand of the Giant.' ('Elgeuse' is also the historic Arabic name of the Orion constellation.) Understanding more about the dynamic between Betelgeuse and its companion star, also referred to as Ori B in a new study published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, could shed light on the entwined fate of both stars. As a supergiant star, Betelgeuse is immense. Compared with our sun, it's about 700 times the radius and contains 18 times as much mass, said lead study author Steve Howell, a senior research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in California. If our sun were replaced with Betelgeuse, the star would not only engulf Earth and all the inner planets but reach past the orbit of Jupiter, according to NASA. It also shines 7,500 to 14,000 times as bright as the sun. At 10 million years old, Betelgeuse is a fraction of the age of our sun, which is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. However, Betelgeuse's enormousness means it has already burned through all the hydrogen at its core, causing it to expand as it nears the end of its life. Years of observations have shown that its luminosity varies periodically about every 416 days, growing fainter and then brighter. This pulsation is typical of red supergiant stars. But Betelgeuse displays an unusual pattern on top of that. 'It has been noted for decades that Betelgeuse also shows a much longer period (of variation) of about 2,170 days (about six years) which remained unexplained,' Howell wrote in an email. Two independent groups of astronomers published papers in 2024 suggesting that an unseen companion star could cause the variability. The Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, however, could see no evidence of such a star. Betelgeuse's size and brightness have posed challenges to attempts to spot a companion. To see both Betelgeuse and its companion, an image has to be both high-resolution and high-contrast, said Jared Goldberg, a research fellow at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics. Goldberg authored a November study suggesting Betelgeuse may have a companion star, but he was not involved with the new research. 'Normally, the Earth's atmosphere makes it hard to do this for the same reason that stars twinkle — the moving gas in the atmosphere scatters the starlight around,' Goldberg said. Howell's team decided to use a speckle imager called 'Alopeke, which means 'fox' in Hawaiian, to search for the companion. 'Speckle imaging is a technique that obtained many thousands of very short exposures of an astronomical object,' Howell said. 'These images are so short that they do not look like stars or galaxies at all, but a blob of 'speckles.'' The speckles are due to distortions from Earth's atmosphere. The thousands of brief images are processed in a way that removes the atmospheric blurring, resulting in a high-resolution telescope image, Howell said. When members of Howell's team observed Betelgeuse during the Great Dimming in 2020, they didn't see anything; the companion was likely obscured behind Betelgeuse, according to Goldberg. But in December, they spied a faint blue glow exactly where Goldberg's research — as well as another study authored by Morgan MacLeod at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics — predicted the companion would be. The speckle imaging revealed a young, bluish star that isn't burning hydrogen at its core yet and only has a mass of 1.5 times that of the sun. The companion star's faintness — four-tenths of one percent as bright as Betelgeuse — is just one reason it's been hard to spot, Howell said. The other is the stars' proximity to one another — only about four times the distance between Earth and the sun separates them. On average, the Earth is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away from the sun. The thing that allows the companion star to be seen, said Goldberg, is that it is a different hue than Betelgeuse. 'If the two headlights on a car represent the two stars, our view from Earth to Betelgeuse and its companion would be the same as trying to separate the two car headlights with your eye from a distance of 50,000 miles,' Howell said. 'Our observations were aided by the fact that we can directly observe Betelgeuse using very short exposures (14 milliseconds each) so as to not saturate our cameras and the large mirror size of Gemini (8 meters) allows us to obtain very high angular resolutions in images of the sky, enough resolution to separate the two stars.' It's the first time a stellar companion has been detected orbiting a supergiant star so closely, the study authors said. 'I was surprised that the companion was so obvious immediately after our data was processed,' Howell said. 'I was thinking it'd be hard to find, but boom, it was right there.' MacLeod, a postdoctoral fellow in theoretical astrophysics and member of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, worked on research published in December that collected historical measurements of Betelgeuse's radial velocity, or motion toward or away from Earth, that began around 1896 on photographic glass plates. The team saw a repeating six-year pattern consistent with the tug of a smaller, orbiting companion star, MacLeod said. 'Putting these lines of evidence, collected from a century of astronomical measurements, together let us predict right where a companion 'should be' if it were real,' he said. 'But we hadn't seen it directly. Howell and his team made a pioneering observation in order to be able to make this initial detection.' MacLeod, who was not involved with the new study, calls its finding 'an amazing result … that shows that even the best-studied stars in our night sky have mysteries to reveal.' 'Because this was such a challenging detection to make, the observations are on the very edge of detection,' MacLeod said. 'What pushed this over the edge is that the star appeared just where we expected when we pulled together the predictions of a century's worth of astronomers.' While the discovery of the companion aligns with Goldberg's research predictions, future observations are still needed to confirm the detection. Speckle imaging is a hard measurement to make and isn't always accurate, Goldberg said. Given that the star was discovered near the limits of the instrument, its presence is probable but 'not yet a slam dunk,' said Edward Guinan, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. Guinan has studied Betelgeuse but was not involved in the new research. However, seeing the companion star track along its proposed six-year orbit would represent a definitive detection of the companion, Guinan said. 'Currently, we think the companion is moving away from us, and going behind Betelgeuse. So there is a clear path to confirm the new study's results: Look again when we expect the companion to be fully behind Betelgeuse, and it will be gone. Look once more when it should be coming back around on the other side, and it should be there,' Goldberg said. A new opportunity to confirm the companion's presence with telescopes will occur in November 2027 when the star would be at its farthest distance from Betelgeuse, making it easier to spot. Like MacLeod's team, Goldberg and his colleagues also determined that Betelgeuse wobbles toward and away from Earth within the same six-year period due to the presence of a stellar companion. Still, questions remain about how exactly a companion star is contributing to Betelgeuse's six-year variability, which appears to be connected to changes in dust around the star, Goldberg said. 'The dimmer phase happens when the companion is behind Betelgeuse, and the brighter phase is when the companion is in front of Betelgeuse,' Goldberg said by email. 'This means it's the opposite of an eclipse, so it seems most likely that Betelgeuse is producing its own dust and the companion is shaping it, rather than dragging it along.' About 30% of pulsating red giant and supergiant stars show the same type of variability, and if that means a companion is present, 'then many more stars harbor these little friends,' Goldberg added. 'Understanding this stellar pair can help us understand the population of things like it. And understanding that population will teach us about star and planet formation in systems that are otherwise extremely hard to observe.' Meanwhile, astronomers still wonder when Betelgeuse will explode, a catastrophic event that has been anticipated since the Great Dimming. While Betelgeuse and its companion star were likely born at the same time, the companion is still forming as a normal star, Howell said. But companion's close orbit, within the outer layers of Betelgeuse's atmosphere, will be its doom, he said. One of two things will happen. The companion star's orbit may cause it to drift slowly closer and plunge into Betelgeuse in about 10,000 years. 'At that point Betelgeuse and its companion will enter into an eternal hug,' Goldberg said. 'If we can get decades of precise direct observations, we might be able to directly test that prediction by seeing if the orbit is shrinking, and if so how quickly.' But if Betelgeuse explodes before that — 'maybe tomorrow, maybe in 100 years' — then the companion star will be destroyed in the supernova, Howell said. 'The future is not good for either star.' Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
Time of India
7 days ago
- Science
- Time of India
Astronomers discover blazing Betelgeuse has companion star
This is an AI generated image. Used for representation purpose only. Since at least the time of the ancient Egyptians, people across the world have gazed up in awe at Betelgeuse , one of the brightest stars blazing in the night sky. Now astronomers have discovered that this red supergiant , known to many as the hunter's shoulder in the Orion constellation , is being orbited by a much smaller companion star , a study said on Monday. It is not the first time Betelgeuse has surprised stargazers. Seemingly out of nowhere, the giant star dramatically dimmed for five months between 2019 and 2020, leading some scientists to suggest it could soon die in an epic supernova explosion. Further observations revealed that this event -- known as the " Great Dimming " -- was actually caused by material ejected from the surface that cooled part of the star, creating a dust cloud that blocked its light. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Swelling and internal bleeding in the brain, help this baby Donate For Health Donate Now Undo But scientists could still not explain why Betelgeuse's brightness changes regularly, both on a 400-day cycle and another that lasts nearly six years. In a paper titled "A Buddy for Betelgeuse" published in December, some researchers theorised that the longer variation could be caused by a hidden small star orbiting the behemoth. Astronomers using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii have now discovered this elusive companion, according to a new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. - Little buddy - This companion has a mass around 1.5 times greater than our Sun, the research estimated. That means it is dwarfed by Betelgeuse, which is 1,000 times bigger than the Sun. The companion star is around four times the distance from Betelgeuse as the Earth is from the Sun, which is quite close for a stellar companion. The discovery is the first time such a close companion star has been detected orbiting a supergiant, according to a statement from the US research centre NOIRLab, which operates the Gemini Observatory. Betelgeuse is more than 10,000 times brighter than the Sun, its blinding light making spotting anything nearby difficult. Steve Howell, a NASA scientist who led the research team, said previous "papers that predicted Betelgeuse's companion believed that no one would likely ever be able to image it". However the Gemini North telescope was able to spot the much smaller, dimmer star using a technique called speckle imaging. This involves assembling many images taken with short exposure times to overcome the distortions that Earth's atmosphere causes ground-bound telescopes. According to Greek myth, the giant hunter Orion claimed he would kill all the world's beasts, so Earth goddess Gaia sent a scorpion to kill him. God king Zeus then turned both Orion and the scorpion -- Scorpius -- into constellations. Earlier, ancient Egyptians included Betelgeuse in the constellation Osiris, their god of the dead. Even earlier, research has suggested that Indigenous Australians included Betelgeuse in their own constellations -- and had noticed the star's varying brightness.
Irish Independent
22-07-2025
- Science
- Irish Independent
Mystery of Betelgeuse twinkle solved after hundreds of years
It is Betelgeuse, and for hundreds of years astronomers have puzzled over why its twinkle grows lighter and then dimmer over time. But the mystery has finally been solved. Betelgeuse has a companion star that pushes light-blocking dust out of the way, temporarily making the star glow more brightly. The presence of the star, nicknamed 'Betelbuddy', had been theorised, but Nasa has spotted it for the first time using its Gemini North telescope, in Hawaii. Steve Howell, a senior research scientist at the Nasa Ames Research Centre in California, said: 'Papers that predicted Betelgeuse's companion believed that no one would likely ever be able to image it. 'Gemini North's ability to obtain high angular resolutions and sharp contrasts allowed the companion of Betelgeuse to be directly detected.' Betelgeuse, roughly pronounced as 'Beetlejuice', sits about 650 light years from Earth and glows 100,000 times brighter than the sun. It is so big that if it sat at the centre of our solar system, in the position of the sun, its surface would lie farther out than Mars. It is known as a variable star, getting brighter and dimmer every 400 days. In 2019 and 2020, there was a steep decrease in Betelgeuse's brightness − an event referred to as the 'Great Dimming', which led to some scientists suggesting its dulled twinkle was foreshadowing an impending supernova that would darken the star for ever. However, it turned out that the star had emitted a large gas bubble, which then cooled to form dust, temporarily blocking its shine. The Great Dimming mystery sparked a renewed interest in studying Betelgeuse, but it was not until researchers used a special technique called 'speckle imaging' that the star was discovered. Speckle imaging uses very short exposure times to freeze out the distortions in images caused by Earth's atmosphere, enabling high resolution, which, when combined with the light-collecting power of Gemini North, allowed the new star to be seen for the first time.
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers crack 1,000-year-old Betelgeuse mystery with 1st-ever sighting of secret companion (photo, video)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. After a long wait, astronomers have finally seen the stellar companion of the famous star Betelgeuse. This companion star orbits Betelgeuse in an incredibly tight orbit, which could explain one of Betelgeuse's longstanding mysteries. The star is doomed, however, and the team behind this discovery predicts that Betelgeuse will cannibalize it in a few thousand years. The fact that Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the sky over Earth, visible with the naked eye, has made it one of the most well-known celestial bodies. And ever since the first astronomers began inspecting this fixture in the night sky, they have been baffled by the fact that its brightness varies over periods of six years. This mystery is now solved. The six-year dimming of this red supergiant star is not to be confused with an event that saw it drop sharply in brightness over 2019 and 2020. This event, known as the "Great Dimming," sparked intense interest across the globe. The Great Dimming was so unexpected that it led some scientists to theorize that it could signal Betelgeuse was approaching the supernova explosion that will one day mark the end of its life. That supernova speculation was well-founded. After all, though it is only around 10 million years old, the fact that Betelgeuse is 700 times the size of the sun means it has burned through its nuclear fuel much faster than our 4.6 billion-year-old star. That means its supernova death is likely approaching. However, in 2023, the Great Dimming was explained by a giant obscuring cloud of dust emitted by Betelgeuse. Even though the mystery of the Great Dimming was solved, this event spurred a renewed interest in this ever-so familiar star, the tenth brightest in the night sky. That renewed interest included the desire of astronomers to solve the less dramatic but more regular periodic dimming of Betelgeuse. The lesser dimming of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse has a primary period of variability that lasts around 400 days, as well as a second, more extended dimming period lasting around six years. Unlike the Great Dimming, which perplexed scientists for only a few years, this regular "heartbeat" of Betelgeuse has baffled humanity for millennia! It was while reviewing archival data that scientists began to theorize that the six-year variability of Betelgeuse could be the work of a hidden companion star. However, deeper investigation with the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's X-ray space observatory Chandra left scientists coming up empty-handed in terms of a companion star. Undeterred, NASA Ames Research Center scientist Steve Howell led a team of astrophysicists who set about investigating Betelgeuse with the Gemini North telescope and its 'Alopeke (Hawaiian for "fox") instrument. "Gemini North's ability to obtain high angular resolutions and sharp contrasts allowed the companion of Betelgeuse to be directly detected," Howell said in a statement. "Papers that predicted Betelgeuse's companion believed that no one would likely ever be able to image it." The 'Alopeke instrument uses a technique in astronomy called "speckle imaging" that uses short exposure times to remove distortions from images that are caused by Earth's atmosphere. This provided the Gemini North telescope with the high-resolution capability to detect the faint companion of Betelgeuse for the first time ever. Howell and colleagues were able to do more than just image the companion star of Betelgeuse; they were also able to determine some of its characteristics. What do we know about Betelgeuse's companion? The team thinks the star has a mass around 1.5 times that of the sun and that it is a hot blue-white star orbiting Betelgeuse at a distance equivalent to four times the distance between Earth and the sun, fairly close for binary stars. That means it exists within the extended atmosphere of Betelgeuse. This represents the first time a companion star has been detected so close to a red supergiant. The team also theorizes that this star has not yet begun to burn hydrogen in its core, the process that defines the main sequence lifetime of a star. Thus, the Betelgeuse system appears to consist of two stars that exist at opposite ends of their lives, despite the fact that both stars formed at the same time! That's because larger and more massive stars don't just burn through their nuclear fuel more rapidly; they also initiate the fusion of hydrogen to helium earlier. However, in this case, this delay doesn't mean that Betelgeuse's companion is in for a long life; the intense gravity of Betelgeuse is likely to drag the smaller star into it, devouring it. The team estimates this cannibalistic event could happen within the next 10,000 years. In the meantime, astronomers will get another look at the stellar companion of Betelgeuse in November 2027 when it achieves maximum separation from the infamous red supergiant star. Related Stories: — New kind of pulsar may explain how mysterious 'black widow' systems evolve — Hear 'black widow' pulsar's song as it destroys companion — NASA X-ray spacecraft reveals secrets of a powerful, spinning neutron star Beyond this research's implications for Betelgeuse and its ill-fated companion, it tells scientists more about why red supergiants undergo periodic changes in brightness how periods of many years. "This detection was at the very extremes of what can be accomplished with Gemini in terms of high-angular resolution imaging, and it worked," Howell said. "This now opens the door for other observational pursuits of a similar nature." The team's research was published on Monday (July 21) across two papers in The Astrophysical Journal. Solve the daily Crossword
