Baltimore MD (SPX) Aug 15, 2022 Analyzing data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and several other...
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.
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.
Betelgeuse's surprisingly petulant behavior is not evidence the star is about to blow up anytime soon.
Dupree is now pulling together all the puzzle pieces of the star's petulant behavior before and during the eruption into a coherent story of a never-before-seen titanic convulsion in an aging star.
Weighing roughly several times as much as our Moon, the fractured piece of photosphere sped off into space and cooled to form a dust cloud that blocked light from the star as seen by Earth observers.
One of the brightest stars in the sky, Betelgeuse is easily found in the right shoulder of the constellation Orion.
Dupree used Hubble to resolve hot spots on the star's surface in 1996.
NASA's Webb Space Telescope may be able to detect the ejected material in infrared light as it continues moving away from the star.
The rocket will spend 15 minutes in space - just enough time to snap a quick image of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, a star in the Cassiopeia constellation that exploded approximately 11,000 light-years away from Earth.