In late June through early August 2020, the team tracked Betelgeuse, measuring the star’s relative brightness in comparison to others found it was getting darker.
Dupree has noted that Betelgeuse is losing mass at a rate 30 million times higher than the Sun, but that recent activity resulted in a loss of roughly two times the average amount of material from the southern hemisphere alone.
“We know that other hotter luminous stars lose material, and it quickly turns to dust, making the star appear much fainter. But in over a century-and-a-half, this has not happened to Betelgeuse. It’s very unique,” Dupree added.
On Aug. 11, the study, “Spatially Resolved Ultraviolet Spectroscopy of the Great Dimming of Betelgeuse,” was submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.
So far, they have not been able to pinpoint the source of the mysterious dimming. There remains a lot of speculation that the star might soon be going supernova.
“Betelgeuse is a bright star in our galaxy, near the end of its life, that is likely to become a supernova,” Dr. Dupree stated. “No one knows how a star behaves in the weeks before it explodes, and there were some ominous predictions that Betelgeuse was ready to become a supernova. Chances are, however, that it will not explode during our lifetime, but who knows?”
