Betelgeuse (pronounced "beetle juice") is a massive red supergiant star 640 light-years from Earth. Recent observations suggest it is shrinking.
Credit: A. Dupree (CfA), R. Gilliland (STScI), FOC, HST, NASA
Commenting on the research, Australian astronomer Peter Tuthill from the University of Sydney said that the diameter of large stars like Betelgeuse was difficult to define.
“Red giant stars like Betelgeuse are like fluffy, extended balls of gas – if you had a jar of Betelgeuse’s atmosphere on Earth it would form a very good vacuum; there’s almost nothing there.”
Since the star’s temperature and brightness hadn’t changed, it showed that the star wasn’t “shrinking away”. Instead something complicated was going on in the stellar atmosphere and dust halo around the star, he said. “[The research] shows that the weather on Betelgeuse is complicated and its [outer] layers seem to evolve and change.”
Townes said his team would be watching Betelgeuse very closely over the next five years to work out what’s going on. “It’s a star worth watching,” he said.
Townes won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1964 for his work on creating the maser (an acronym for ‘microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation’) before turning to astrophysics.
correct pronunciation
Contrary to the info provided in the photo caption, Betelgeuse is NOT pronounced "beetle juice". The correct pronunciation is "BAY-TEL G-ICE". Next, they'll be telling us how to mispronounce Uranus. It would appear that Betelgeuse is shedding it's outer layers of gas. This is the last stage of a red giant before slowly collapsing, or going supernova, dependent on the star's mass. According to the article, it's a big mystery with no clue. (Who writes this stuff?) With a mass this large, Betelgeuse is bound to go supernova, becoming a Neutron star or a black-hole. If these obsevations are accurate and the star is "shrinking" this quickly, a supernova can't be too far off.
They're trying to sound smart...
That's all.
The star is bound to go 'supernova' anytime now.
Proper Pronunciation Of Betelgeuse.
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