Oh, Betelgeuse, everyone’s favorite M2Iab supergiant star. Why did it dim so catastrophically earlier this year? Hubble may have clinched the answer: It erupted, blowing out a HUGE dust cloud that blocked its light.https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/smoking-gun-at-betelgeuse-hubble-shows-it-was-belching-dust-that-dimmed-the-red-supergiant …
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Always looking for a hook by anthropomorphization, which Betelgeusian dust-cloud-exuding bodily expulsion metaphor works best for you?
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3/ It wasn't clear why Betelgeuse got so faint that you could just go outside and look at it to see how dim it had gotten. It dropped in brightness by 70%! One idea was starspots, like sunspots but on other stars, and the other was it blasting out a dust cloud.
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4/ So what's new here? Hubble observations in the ultraviolet showed that the supergiant star got *brighter* in the UV just before The Great Dimming. That can happen when a big pulse, like a wave, moves up from deep inside the star, compressing the upper layers and heating them.
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5/ Once it got near the surface the material cooled, forming dust (teeny rocky or sooty grains), which then blasted away in a cloud. That stuff is opaque, so it blocked the light from Betelgeuse, dimming it. That explains why it got brighter first, then dimmer.pic.twitter.com/MxFTtV41Q1
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6/ But there's more! Pix taken in early and late 2019 by the Very Large Telescope showed that just the southern half of Betelgeuse dimmed. So whatever happened was local. It didn't happen over the whole star. [Note: This is AN ACTUAL IMAGE of Betelgeuse!] https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/betelgeuses-shenanigans-just-got-weirder-only-part-of-it-is-dimming …pic.twitter.com/sCIesN0MHA
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