by Take a look at a clear night and you will see a bright red star sitting on the shoulder of the constellation Orion.
It is a prayer room and for hundreds of years astronomers have confused why its twinkle becomes easier and then becomes weaker over time.
But the secret was finally solved.
Betelgeuse has a companion star, the light -blocking dust pulls out of the way and makes the star temporarily shining.
The presence of the star with the nickname “Betelbuddy” was theorized, but NASA discovered her for the first time with her Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii.
Steve Howell, a senior research scientist at NASA AMES Research Center in California, said: “Papers that predicted Betelgeus’s companions believed that nobody would ever be able to present it.
“Gemini North’s ability to maintain high angle resolutions and sharp contrasts made it possible for the companion of the Betelguse to be demonstrated directly.”
Betelgeuse, roughly pronounced as a “Beetlejuice”, which was the inspiration for the character of the same name, is about 650 light years from the earth and lights up 100,000 times brighter than the sun.
It is so large that when it is in the middle of the solar system, in the position of the sun, its surface is further outside than the Mars and the asteroid belt.
It is known as a variable star that becomes brighter and dimmer every 400 days. It also has a longer phase of change that takes about six years.
The striking red star was noted in the first century AD, like Ptolemaios, and its changing brightness has confused astronomers for thousands of years.
In 2019 and 2020 there was a severe decline in Betelgeus’ brightness – an event that was described as “great dimming”, which meant that some scientists suggested that his cloudy twinkle was an upcoming supernova that would darken the star forever.
However, it turned out that the star had emitted a large gas bubble, which then cooled into dust and temporarily blocked its shine.
The Great Dimming Mystery aroused another interest in studying Betelguse and going to the bottom of its strange radio.
Scientists suggested that a second star could be responsible, but when the Hubble world space telescope and the Chandra X-ray observatory were looking for, they found nothing.
The star was only discovered when the researchers used a special technique called “Speckle Imagine”.
The Speckle imaging uses very short exposure times to freeze the distortions of the distortions caused by the earth’s atmosphere, and enabled a high resolution, which in combination with the light-collectible power of Gemini North enabled that the new star could be seen for the first time.
Martin Still, program director of the International Gemini Observatory, said: “The solution to the solution to the Betelgeuse problem, which has been in existence for hundreds of years, will be an impressive highlight success.”
The new star is estimated to be around 50 percent larger than the sun, but has not yet broken into the burning hydrogen burning in the nuclear fusion, which would make it more visible.
The companion is relatively close to the surface of Betelgeuse – about four times the distance between the earth and the sun – and the couple was probably born at the same time.
However, the accompanying star will have a shortened lifespan, as strong tidal forces lead to it converting in Betelgäuse and being included in the larger star in the next 10,000 years.
The discovery of the new star was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
