In Space Science -- As In All Of Life -- With Time, Comes... More Learning. More... Betelgeuse Wisdom.

On and off for three years or so, we've discussed the poetic possibility that we might soon see a second celestial object in the night skies here on Earth -- almost as bright as our own full moon. That was a possibility (last in 2020) when some Hubble images and data suggested that the truly immense star on Orion's shoulder might be about to go. . . supernova.

But later arriving measurements... suggest it was just a giant sun-storm. [Truly giantic -- like engulfing the plane of the orbit of Mercury in our solar system (were we there) in just the inner-most rings of the observed ejection.] This event -- the Betelgeuse SME -- blasted off roughly 400 billion times as much mass as a typical solar flare here in our system, from our sun. Here's the latest data, from NASA, and as imaged at right:

. . .[We've received] new spectroscopic and imaging data from the STELLA robotic observatory, the Fred L. Whipple Observatory's Tillinghast Reflector Echelle Spectrograph (TRES), NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft (STEREO-A), NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). Dupree emphasizes that the Hubble data was pivotal to helping sort out the mystery.

"We've never before seen a huge mass ejection of the surface of a star. We are left with something going on that we don't completely understand. It's a totally new phenomenon that we can observe directly and resolve surface details with Hubble. We're watching stellar evolution in real time."

The titanic outburst in 2019 was possibly caused by a convective plume, more than a million miles across, bubbling up from deep inside the star. It produced shocks and pulsations that blasted off the chunk of the photosphere leaving the star with a large cool surface area under the dust cloud that was produced by the cooling piece of photosphere. Betelgeuse is now struggling to recover from this injury. . . .

Again. . . with time, the luminous. . . becomes. . . clear. Even star-sized injuries. . . heal. Travel well. . . but travel light, one and all. Dinner out, up next -- under the stars, with dear old friends. Smile.

नमस्ते