Dimming Betelgeuse Likely Isn't Cold, Just Dusty, New Study Shows
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:
Dimming Betelgeuse likely isn't cold, just dusty, new study shows:
Late last year, news broke that the star Betelgeuse was fading significantly, ultimately dropping to around 40% of its usual brightness. The activity fueled popular speculation that the red supergiant would soon explode as a massive supernova.
But astronomers have more benign theories to explain the star's dimming behavior. And scientists at the University of Washington and Lowell Observatory believe they have support for one of them: Betelgeuse isn't dimming because it's about to explode-it's just dusty.
In a paper accepted to Astrophysical Journal Letters and published on the preprint site arXiv, Emily Levesque, a UW associate professor of astronomy, and Philip Massey, an astronomer with Lowell Observatory, report that observations of Betelgeuse taken Feb. 14 at the Flagstaff, Arizona, observatory allowed them to calculate the average surfacetemperature of the star. They discovered that Betelgeuse is significantly warmer than expected if the recent dimming were caused by a cooling of the star's surface.
The new calculations lend support to the theory that Betelgeuse-as many red supergiant stars are prone to do-has likely sloughed off some material from its outer layers.
"We see this all the time in red supergiants, and it's a normal part of their life cycle," said Levesque. "Red supergiants will occasionally shed material from their surfaces, which will condense around the star as dust. As it cools and dissipates, the dust grains will absorb some of the light heading toward us and block our view."
It is still true: Astronomers expect Betelgeuse to explode as a supernova within the next 100,000 years when its core collapses. But the star's dimming, which began in October, wasn't necessarily a sign of an imminent supernova, according to Massey.
Previously:
New Image Shows Betelgeuse Isn't Dimming Evenly
Waiting for Betelgeuse: What's Up With the Tempestuous Star?
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.