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Why the supergiant star Betelgeuse went mysteriously dim last year

High-resolution images suggest the star spewed out so much dust that its brightness dropped by two-thirds in 2020.
  1. Davide Castelvecchi
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Last year’s dramatic dimming of the star Betelgeuse — familiar to many as the ‘right shoulder’ of the constellation Orion — was caused by a cloud of dust spewed out by the star itself. Astrophysicists reached this conclusion, published on 16 June in Nature1, using high-resolution imaging of Betelgeuse before and after the dimming, combined with computer simulations.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01633-4

Read the related News & Views, ‘Great dimming of Betelguese explained’.

References

  1. Montargès, M. et al. Nature 594, 365–368 (2021).

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  2. Joyce, M. et al. Astrophys. J. 902, 63 (2020).

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