{"id":82620,"date":"2025-07-22T07:41:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T07:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/82620\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T07:41:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T07:41:13","slug":"astronomers-spot-companion-star-in-orbit-around-iconic-star-betelgeuse-confirming-suspicions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/82620\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers Spot Companion Star in Orbit Around Iconic Star Betelgeuse, Confirming Suspicions"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2024, astronomers<\/a> surmised<\/a> that Betelgeuse might have a stellar \u201cbuddy.\u201d If this hypothetical companion existed, it would help answer some questions about the red supergiant\u2019s strange glowing patterns. As it turns out, these suspicions were correct.<\/p>\n

After numerous false signals and empty search results, astronomers with NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center\u00a0have confirmed that Betelgeuse does, in fact, have a tiny buddy star. The young star, with a mass about 1.5 times that of the Sun, likely exerts some unsolicited influence on the larger star\u2019s gravitational field and the cosmic dust floating in its vicinity. The interactions between the two stars make it appear as though Betelgeuse\u2014unlike most stars of its kind\u2014undergoes an additional, extended period of intermittent dimming roughly every six years.<\/p>\n

\u201cPapers that predicted Betelgeuse\u2019s companion believed that no one would likely ever be able to image it,\u201d Steve Howell, an astronomer who led the team that discovered the star, said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cThis now opens the door for other observational pursuits of a similar nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the discovery, astronomers used the Gemini North telescope<\/a> in Hawaii, employing a technique known as speckle imaging, which uses very short exposure times to wipe out distortions in space images caused by Earth\u2019s atmosphere. This allowed the researchers to directly capture the companion star at a high enough resolution to identify some key characteristics about the newly discovered star, such as its mass and temperature.<\/p>\n

\"BetelgeuseBetelgeuse and Its Stellar Companion in Orion. Credit: International Gemini Observatory\/NOIRLab\/NSF\/AURA\/M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) <\/p>\n

What\u2019s fascinating about \u201cBetelBuddy\u201d\u2014as the researchers who predicted its existence called it in a past interview with Gizmodo<\/a>\u2014is that it was probably born around the same time as Betelgeuse. To put this into perspective, Betelgeuse, a red supergiant, is nearing the end of its stellar lifespan, and astronomers predict it could explode into a fiery supernova within a decade or so. But the newly discovered companion star is so young that it hasn\u2019t even started igniting hydrogen at its core, implying that it\u2019s still at the earliest stages of stellar evolution. This is likely because Betelgeuse, which is somewhere between 10 and 20 times the mass of our Sun, has a far shorter lifespan compared to its lightweight buddy.<\/p>\n

Given Betelgeuse\u2019s relative proximity to Earth, astronomers have studied it more closely than most other stars for centuries. From their observations, astronomers found that the star\u2019s brightness varies on a cycle of about 400 days, with a secondary period lasting around six years. Variable stars are relatively common, but astronomers had long struggled to explain why Betelgeuse had an extended dimming period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To be clear, this is different from the \u201cGreat Dimming\u201d of Betelgeuse from 2019 to 2020, which scientists suspect is the result of the star ejecting a large cloud of dust that subsequently blurred its brightness.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

With the new discovery, astronomers now have a good answer to the mystery behind the years-long dimming and brightening pattern of the huge star Betelgeuse. They expect, however, that Betelgeuse\u2019s intense gravitational pull will gobble up the young star within the next 10,000 years.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, this won\u2019t be the first and last time we see BetelBuddy alive. Astronomers expect the young star to pass within our telescopes\u2019 detection range in November 2027, when it flies the farthest away from Betelgeuse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2024, astronomers surmised that Betelgeuse might have a stellar \u201cbuddy.\u201d If this hypothetical companion existed, it would…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":82621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4514,159,56331,56332,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-82620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-astronomy","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-stellar-astronomy","11":"tag-stellar-evolution","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114895761200280259","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}