Betelgeuse is dimming and there is no one to blame!

Betelgeuse which forms the shoulder of the constellation Orion (The Hunter) is one of the brightest stars in the night sky. However, the star started dimming from October 2019 and continued to become even dull. By mid-February 2020, the monster star lost more than two-thirds of its brightness.

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Astronomers around the world couldn’t understand the phenomena and it gave rise to many speculations. The most prominent of them was the suggestion that we are about to witness the death of a star as Betelgeuse was going to explode as a supernova.

A recent study by Hubble, however, has given a logical solution for the mysterious dimming of the star. Ultraviolet observations by the Hubble Space Telescope suggest that the unexpected dimming was caused by an immense amount of superhot material ejected into space.

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“With Hubble, we see the material as it left the star’s visible surface and moved out through the atmosphere before the dust formed that caused the star to appear to dim,” said Andrea Dupree, associate director of the Center for Astrophysics.

The ejected material cooled and formed a dust cloud that blocked the starlight coming from about a quarter of Betelgeuse’s surface. Thus, The star has no one to blame but itself.