The unprecedented drop in the brightness of the red supergiant Betelgeuse is not at all a sign of the impending death of a star. She faded due to a huge cloud of cosmic dust that obscured its light, scientists say in a study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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A star in the constellation Orion at a distance of about 600-700 light years from Earth fade rapidly at the end of 2019. By mid-February, its brightness was only 36% of the norm.
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Astronomers have suggested that the star is at the final stage of its evolution. They began to wait for the death of Betelgeuse in the form of a supernova and even modeled, how will it look like. Such a flash would be noticeable on Earth with the naked eye even in daylight.
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Now the red supergiant returns to normal brightness levels. Astronomers studied the temperature of the star to understand what caused its fading.
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It turned out that the star simply released a large cloud of dust, which briefly obscured the light emanating from it. This is a fairly typical phenomenon for very old stars, which at the end of their evolution shed their shell layers.
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“This is a normal part of their life cycle,” says astronomer Emily Levesque of the University of Washington.
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Betelgeuse is nevertheless moving toward the end of her life, but a supernova outburst will not happen as fast as scientists had suggested. The star will last several tens of thousands of years.
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