Astronomers have confirmed that Bethelgauss, the Red Super Giant, probably has a companion star.
For a long time, it aims to share orbits with Bethelge – a very bright star that can reach supernova in the next few thousand years – finally appears in a unique observation taken by the Gemini North Telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
If confirmed, the newly discovered star explains a long-standing mystery. Why Bethelgese has a regular pattern of becoming lighter and dimmed every six years.
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To find a companion, astronomers opened and closed the telescope imager in just 14 milliseconds. “That was the only way we couldn’t saturate our detector,” Steve Howell, a senior research scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, told LivesCience.
The new study, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 24, is based on research from two modeling studies in 2024, suggesting that Betelgeuse has peers. But while fresh observations are convincing, they are not yet slam dunks, and require confirmation.
“Little detection is found there,” Howell admitted, noting that observation is at the very limits of Gemini’s ability. But what astronomers saw was “exactly consistent with everything else in the model.”
That short glimpse of the supposed companion shows that it is 1.5 times the mass of the Sun, and is early in its life. The stars are very young and have not begun to burn hydrogen in their cores. Companion orbits are seduced once every six years at about four times the distance from Earth to the Sun.
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But the young star literally touches Bethel juice as it flies around. According to NASA, Betelgeus is 700 times the size of our Sun, so despite orbiting relatively far, our companions follow the path through the atmosphere outside the giant star.
Anxious proximity doesn’t last long. “It’s not a happy ending for your peers because it’s wrapped in Bethelgazes,” Howell said. “The question is, “Will the temptation explode in Supernova before the stars spiral?”
Howell says the team is currently asking for telescope time to observe Antares. This is another bright star with a variety of luminosities that may hide its companions. He said bright stars like Antares and Betelgeus are understood by experts as they produce absurd glare in the metre-wide telescopes used by astronomers. Howell added that the ultra-fast exposure technique his team came up with to study Bethel juice could help study brighter stars in more generally.
In the meantime, his team found time to call out Betelgeuse’s obvious teammates. The name “Betelgeuse” can be translated from Arabic, NASA said, “The Hand of Al-Jawza.” Howell’s team thus named their companion “Siwarha” or “her bracelet.”
However, Siwalha remains an informal moniker until the presence of companion stars is confirmed and the International Astronomical Union (which regulates the names of stars) approves the name. Sadly, the nickname “Betelbuddy,” coined by researchers studying virtual stars last year, may have run the course.
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