The astronomers found that an unexpected and significant periods of darkening of Betelgeuse in late 2019 and early 2020, most likely caused by the emission and cooling of the hot, dense gases, and that the star is possibly going through another blackout period for more than a year earlier than usual. The disclosure of the secrets of a mysterious crossfade luminary reported in an article published in The Astrophysical Journal.
In the period from October to November 2019 the Hubble space telescope observed the movement of the dense heated material through the atmosphere of stars with a velocity of 322 thousand kilometers per hour. After a month, several ground-based telescopes recorded a decrease in brightness in the southern hemisphere of Betelgeuse. By February 2020, the star has lost more than two thirds of its luster, and that’s a shadow, visible even to the naked eye, provoked the rumors that the star may soon become a supernova.
Moving gas cooled at the distance of a million kilometers from the star; as a result, condensed dust, which blocked the southern part of the star was recorded by astronomers in January and February. Observations using the Hubble telescope showed that the detected plasma is not ejected from the poles of rotation of the star, as predicted by the stellar models. Instead, the substance can be separated from any part of the surface of the star.
Although Betelgeuse loses mass 30 million times faster than the Sun, recent activity has led to the loss of the southern hemisphere of the substance, whose volume is twice more than usual.
The new observations, conducted in June-August 2020, confirmed that the star dims again. Betelgeuse usually goes through cycles of brightness change of the duration of about 420 days, and since the previous low was in February 2020, this is a new blackout takes place more than a year earlier.
