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CNN
4 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
4 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.
Irish Daily Mirror
4 days ago
- Science
- Irish Daily Mirror
Galway-sized object in space 'may be alien spacecraft coming to attack'
A mysterious object the size of Galway could potentially be an aggressive alien spacecraft set to attack Earth in November, a new study suggests. Earlier this month, experts confirmed the discovery of a rare interstellar visitor, only the third ever detected, speeding through our Solar System at an extraordinary pace. A draft scientific paper published on Tuesday proposes that the object, known as 3I/ATLAS, might be extra-terrestrial technology and could launch a surprise attack on our planet. The researchers suggest that the object's orbit is such that it would make it easier for an intelligent alien craft to approach Earth undetected. The report claims that when it gets closest to the Sun in late November, the object will be hidden from Earth's view, allowing it to execute a covert high-speed manoeuvre to slow down and remain in the Solar System to secretly prepare for an attack. Scientists also note that 3I/ATLAS has an unusual trajectory that brings it very close to planets like Venus, Mars and Jupiter, something highly unlikely to occur by chance, with less than a 0.005% probability. An artist's impression of what the interstellar object in the Solar System could be (Image: NASA / SWNS) Comet 3I/ATLAS streaks across a dense star field in this image captured by the Gemini North telescope's Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (Image: NSF NOIRLab/ Ob et al. / SWNS) One of the authors of the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, is Avi Loeb, a renowned Harvard astrophysicist known for his controversial research and outspoken views on the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. He gained widespread attention for suggesting that the 2017 interstellar object 'Oumuamua might be an artificial probe created by an alien civilisation, based on its unusual acceleration and shape, reports the Mirror. Adam Hibberd and Adam Crowl, both from the Initiative for Interstellar Studies in London, have teamed up with their colleague to pen a paper that delves into the realm of the hypothetical regarding interstellar objects. The trio clarify their stance in the paper: "This paper is contingent on a remarkable but, as we shall show, testable hypothesis, to which the authors do not necessarily ascribe, yet is certainly worthy of an analysis and a report." Despite the speculative nature of their work, they caution: "The consequences, should the hypothesis turn out to be correct, could potentially be dire for humanity, and would possibly require defensive measures to be undertaken (though these might prove futile)." They also note the intrinsic value of their hypothesis, stating: "The hypothesis is an interesting exercise in its own right, and is fun to pursue, irrespective of its likely validity." The celestial body in question, now catalogued as 3I/ATLAS (formerly known as A11pl3Z), is thought to originate from a far-flung star system and hurtles through space at speeds exceeding 60 kilometres per second. First detected on July 1 by the ATLAS survey telescope in Río Hurtado, Chile, 3I/ATLAS has sparked curiosity and speculation. It's estimated to measure somewhere between 10 and 20 kilometres across, though it could present a smaller profile if it's predominantly made up of reflective ice. Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news from the Irish Mirror direct to your inbox: Sign up here.
New York Post
5 days ago
- Science
- New York Post
‘Possibly hostile' alien threat detected in unknown interstellar object, a shocking new study claims
A mysterious intergalactic object could potentially be a 'hostile' alien spacecraft that's slated to attack our planet in November, according to a controversial new study by a small group of scientists. 'The consequences, should the hypothesis turn out to be correct, could potentially be dire for humanity,' the researchers wrote in the inflammatory paper, which was published July 16 to the preprint server arXiv, South West News Service reported. 3 Comet 3I/ATLAS streaks across a dense star field in this image captured by the Gemini North telescope's Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph, July 2025. NSF NOIRLab/ Ob et al. / SWNS Advertisement Dubbed 3I/ATLAS, the interstellar entity was discovered on July 1, rocketing toward the sun at more than 130,000 mph, Live Science reported. Less than 24 hours later, it was confirmed to be an interstellar object with initial observations suggesting that it could be a comet that measures up to 15 miles in diameter — larger than Manhattan. However, in the new paper, the trio of researchers suggested that it might be a piece of extraterrestrial spy technology in disguise. One of the researchers, Avi Loeb — a prominent Harvard astrophysicist known for linking extraterrestrial objects to alien life — previously made waves after floating the theory that 2017 interstellar object ʻOumuamua could be an artificial recon probe sent by an alien civilization, based on its odd shape and acceleration. Advertisement In this study, which he collaborated on with Adam Hibberd and Adam Crowl of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies in London, Loeb postulated that 3I/ATLAS's trajectory suggests a similarly alien origin. The trio felt the object's speed — which was significantly faster than ʻOumuamua and other objects — and the fact that it entered our solar system from a different angle than its predecessors offer 'various benefits to an extraterrestrial intelligence,' Loeb wrote in a blog post. 3 'The consequences, should the hypothesis turn out to be correct, could potentially be dire for humanity,' the researchers wrote in the inflammatory paper. ESA/Hubble/NASA/ESO/ / SWNS One benefit is that 3I/ATLAS will make close approaches to Jupiter, Mars and Venus, which could allow aliens to stealthily plant spy 'gadgets' there, Loeb wrote. Advertisement When the so-called undercover UFO reaches its closest to the Sun (perihelion) in late November, it will be concealed from Earth's view. 'This could be intentional to avoid detailed observations from Earth-based telescopes when the object is brightest or when gadgets are sent to Earth from that hidden vantage point,' Loeb declared. If this anomaly is a 'technological artifact,' this could support the dark forest hypothesis, which argues we haven't found signs of extraterrestrial entities because they are remaining undercover to shield themselves from predators or prey. Loeb warns that this could suggest that an attack is likely and would 'possibly require defensive measures to be undertaken.' 3 The Deep Random Survey telescope managed to capture images of interstellar object 3I/Atlas (pictured) in July 2025. K Ly/Deep Random Survey / SWNS Advertisement The problem is that 3I/ATLAS is traveling too fast for an Earth-based spacecraft to intercept it before it exits the solar system. 'It is therefore impractical for earthlings to land on 3I/ATLAS at closest approach by boarding chemical rockets, since our best rockets reach at most a third of that speed,' Loeb wrote. However, other scientists have thrown cold water on the so-called alien origins of the object, which they believe is a comet. 'All evidence points to this being an ordinary comet that was ejected from another solar system, just as countless billions of comets have been ejected from our own solar system,' added Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada who studies solar system dynamics, Live Science reported. In fact, even Loeb admitted in his blog that his alien spy probe theory is a bit far-fetched: 'By far, the most likely outcome will be that 3I/ATLAS is a completely natural interstellar object, probably a comet.' The researchers also warned the public to take the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, with a grain of salt. 'This paper is contingent on a remarkable but, as we shall show, testable hypothesis, to which the authors do not necessarily ascribe, yet is certainly worthy of an analysis and a report,' they wrote. 'The hypothesis is an interesting exercise in its own right, and is fun to pursue, irrespective of its likely validity.' Advertisement However, critics have called their project a mockery of the work of other scientists, who have provided plenty of evidence that 3I/ATLAS is not evidence of a pending close encounter. 'Astronomers all around the world have been thrilled at the arrival of 3I/ATLAS, collaborating to use advanced telescopes to learn about this visitor,' Chris Lintott, an astronomer at the University of Oxford who helped simulate 3I/ATLAS's galactic origins, told Live Science. 'Any suggestion that it's artificial is nonsense on stilts, and is an insult to the exciting work going on to understand this object.'
Jordan Times
6 days ago
- Science
- Jordan Times
Astronomers discover blazing Betelgeuse has companion star
PARIS — 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. 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.
