On and off for three years or so, we’ve discussed the poetic possibility that we might soon see a second celestial object in the night skies here on Earth — almost as bright as our own full moon. That was a possibility (last in 2020) when some Hubble images and data suggested that the truly immense star on Orion’s shoulder might be about to go… supernova.
But later arriving measurements… suggest it was just a giant sun-storm. [Truly giantic — like engulfing the plane of the orbit of Mercury in our solar system (were we there) in just the inner-most rings of the observed ejection.] This event — the Betelgeuse SME — blasted off roughly 400 billion times as much mass as a typical solar flare here in our system, from our sun. Here’s the latest data, from NASA, and as imaged at right:
…[We’ve received] new spectroscopic and imaging data from the STELLA robotic observatory, the Fred L. Whipple Observatory’s Tillinghast Reflector Echelle Spectrograph (TRES), NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft (STEREO-A), NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). Dupree emphasizes that the Hubble data was pivotal to helping sort out the mystery.
“We’ve never before seen a huge mass ejection of the surface of a star. We are left with something going on that we don’t completely understand. It’s a totally new phenomenon that we can observe directly and resolve surface details with Hubble. We’re watching stellar evolution in real time.”
The titanic outburst in 2019 was possibly caused by a convective plume, more than a million miles across, bubbling up from deep inside the star. It produced shocks and pulsations that blasted off the chunk of the photosphere leaving the star with a large cool surface area under the dust cloud that was produced by the cooling piece of photosphere. Betelgeuse is now struggling to recover from this injury….
Again… with time, the luminous… becomes… clear. Even star-sized injuries… heal. Travel well… but travel light, one and all. Dinner out, up next — under the stars, with dear old friends. Smile.
नमस्ते
Powerline Lies... 