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Betelgeuse: Nearby 'supernova' star's dimming explained - Yahoo News
Jun 29, 2020 36 secs
Astronomers say big cool patches on a "supergiant" star close to Earth were behind its surprise dimming last year.

Red giant stars like Betelgeuse frequently undergo changes in brightness, but the drop to 40% of its normal value between October 2019 and April 2020 surprised astronomers.

Red giants exhibit a behaviour known as pulsation, caused by changes in the area and temperature of the star's surface layers.

Instead, the astronomers say, temperature variations in the photosphere - the luminous surface of the star - most likely caused the brightness to drop.

The Betelgeuse star spot would be a hundred times larger than the Sun.

It is a supergiant star growing a super-sized star spot." said co-author Prof Albert Zijlstra from The University of Manchester, UK.

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