I’m the world's only solar eclipse journalist. I'm the editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com and author of The Complete Guide To The Great North American Eclipse of April 8, 2024 and When Is The Next Eclipse? A traveler’s guide to total solar eclipses 2024-2034.
Go outside tonight when it gets dark and look to the southwestern sky. Can you see Orion’s Belt? Those three bright stars—Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka—are unmistakable, but so is a bright star just above it, the ruddy-colored supergiant Betelgeuse. An icon of the winter night sky in the northern hemisphere, it’s the closest red supergiant star to the solar system.and is supposed to be the tenth brightest in the sky.
Betelgeuse—also known as Alpha Orionis—is 20 times the mass of the sun and 1,400 times its size. It’s 650 light years distant from the solar system, so whatever is going on with it right now has already happened 650 years ago—we’re only just now seeing its light. Or lack of. But there’s no need to worry because Betelgeuse is well beyond the 50 light-years “supernova danger zone.”
In late 2019 and early 2020, Betelgeuse was in the headlines because of its sudden “great dimming,” during which it slumped to about 40% of its usual brightness before gradually returning to normal. It also Although it was already known to be a variable star whose brightness shifted over about 400 days and over six years, nothing as dramatic as its “great dimming” had ever been observed.Convection caused a cold spot in its southern hemisphere, making it appear dimmer.It’s dust, something that red supergiant stars eject a lot of.had unleashed a mass ejection of material that became a dust cloud obscuring some of the star’s brightness as seen from Earth..
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