The sudden and unexpected dimming of the star Betelgeuse at the beginning of this year was most likely caused by an immense cosmic dust cloud that slid in front of the red supergiant. This is evident from observations made by the space telescope Hubble, space agencies NASA and ESA report Thursday.
Betelgeuse is normally one of the brightest stars in the night sky. The star is so large that if it replaced the sun in the center of our solar system, it would extend beyond Jupiter’s orbit.
Astronomers saw that Betelgeuse, part of the constellation Orion, had been dimming since 2019. In February it turned out that the superstar had only 36 percent of its normal brightness left.
The fact that the star dimmed briefly suggested a possible imminent supernova, a phenomenon in which a huge star explodes at the end of its life. This blast would be clearly visible from Earth.
Still, astronomers considered the chance of a supernova small. This suspicion was confirmed after the star returned to normal brightness in 2020.
It was more likely that Betelgeuse was cooling off or that a large cloud of stardust would be the culprit. The latter hypothesis therefore seems to be correct, judging from the images that Hubble now offers scientists.
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