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What’s Happening with Betelgeuse? Astronomers Propose a Specialized Telescope to Watch the Star Every Night - Universe Today
Oct 19, 2020 2 mins, 12 secs

Starting in late 2019, Betelgeuse began drawing a lot of attention after it mysteriously started dimming, only to brighten again a few months later.

For a variable star like Betelgeuse, periodic dimming and brightening are normal, but the extent of its fluctuation led to all sorts of theories as to what might be causing it.

The paper, “Betelgeuse scope: single-mode-fibers-assisted optical interferometer design for dedicated stellar activity monitoring,” is also available online as part of the Proceedings of SPIE, Vol.

To recap, Betelgeuse is a red giant star that is about 12 times as massive as our Sun and about 900 times as large.

At this point, Betelgeuse began to brighten until the end of May, at which point the dimming started all over again.

Then there’s the “Dust formation and blocking hypothesis,” which is based on observations conducted with the VLT/SPHERE and the Hubble Space Telescope that suggest that there was a mass ejection from a large convective cell in the photosphere.

In order to do this, telescopes that are capable of conducting high-angular resolution observations (such as optical interferometry) would be needed.

Collaborators [are also needed], and we have been taken some data with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer at Paranal, Chile (led by M. Montarges) and the CHARA array at the Mount Wilson Observatory.

We are currently working on image reconstruction of interferometry data to reveal any dark spots and convection cells on the Betelgeuse surface.”.

As they describe it, this “Betelgeuse Scope” will leverage advancements made in the field of optical interferometry and the telecommunication industry.

It will consist of an array of 12 x 4 inch Cassegrain-reflector optical telescopes, which will be mounted to the surface of a large radio dish, which will allow for snapshot imaging of convection cells and time-evolution monitoring.

“We have proposed a unique six telescope interferometer concept installing on a radio antenna.

Another benefit of installing the telescope array on a common mount is that we don’t need longer delay lines as in the classical non-common mount based long-baseline interferometers.

In addition to being able to monitor Betelgeuse and resolve the mystery of its dimming, the Betelgeuse Scope will also allow for significant advancements in the field of astronomy.

“Our proposed telescope monitors the Betelgeuse every-night with high-angular resolutions, makes a movie of motion of dynamic convection activity on the surface.

At present, Anugu and his team are building a prototype of their proposed telescope, which will be mounted on the University of Arizona’s 6-meter (~20 foot) radio dish.

“Once successful, we reuse the same optics and actuators for the actual 12-m radio antenna, and 12 telescope interferometer array as this concept is scalable and modular.”

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