Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
The same star that went viral in 2019 for being on the edge of going supernova (it didn’t) is now in the spotlight again for having a friend.
Because Betelgeuse ejected a massive amount of gas and dust when it first made headlines, a companion—which was suspected for centuries—wouldn’t have been detectable.
Now, it seems that the companion of Betelgeuse may have finally been detected through an advanced imaging technique, and will be more visible when it orbits further away from its host.
Betelgeuse needs no introduction. Besides having its name borrowed by the ghost with the most, this 10-million-year-old red supergiant that mysteriously pulsates at the edge of the Orion constellation is one of the brightest stars in the night sky. And it might not be alone.
Like its movie doppelgänger, Betelgeuse is undead… sort of. Having exhausted all of its hydrogen fuel, it has now moved on to fusing helium atoms in its red giant phase, which explains its extreme size and brightness (the same thing is expected to happen to our Sun in about 5 billion years). It went viral in 2019 for an event called the Great Dimming, during which the star grew so ominously dark that many astronomers thought it was on the verge of going supernova. The reality however, was less final—the shadows obscuring the star were not a forecast of doom, but huge gobs of gas and dust it had belched out.
Though Betelgeuse has been thought to have a companion star for hundreds of years, the monster’s intense luminosity (up to 14,000 times brighter than the Sun) blocked out anything in its vicinity. The constant swirling of Earth’s thick atmosphere is also problematic—with the atmosphere in the way, objects in space can appear blurred when observed from our planet’s surface. While Hubble was able to observe what is now called the Great Dimming event from space and clear up fears of a supernova going off only 700 light-years away, it was impossible to see a companion through the enormous ejection of star stuff.
Eventually, astrophysicist Steve Howell—a senior research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center—decided to observe Betelgeuse from the ground-based Gemini North telescope at the dormant Mauna Kea volcano in Hawai’i. Gemini’s large aperture allowed for brighter images and made it ideal for spotting an object that might have previously been missed. Its hi-res camera is known as the ‘Alopeke speckle imager, and it uses an imaging technique based around ultra-short exposure times that freeze out atmospheric interference as the camera captures thousands upon thousands of images. Any remaining signs of turbulence can be removed when the images are processed.
Shifts in the velocity, angle, and brightness of Betelgeuse previously sparked the idea that a hypothetical companion star may be behind some of the perturbations scientists see when observing the star. Having had his eye on the red giant since the Great Dimming, Howell and his research team were insistent on finding an object that had eluded detection for so long. They were almost certain ‘Alopeke would be able to glimpse at least some possible evidence of the companion—if it existed.
“In a blind search for close stellar companions to bright stars, the results presented here would be marginal, but the correspondence between our detection and the predicted location of the companion adds credence to the result,” the team said in a study recently published in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Howell’s results showed possible evidence for a stellar companion at the outer edges of Betelgeuse’s atmosphere—right in the same location that had been predicted by astronomers and astrophysicists before him. The faint companion seems to be orbiting at the same distance and angle suggested by those predictions. It will be more detectable when it reaches the point in its orbit that is the furthest away from the overwhelming brightness of Betelgeuse, which will be in November of 2027, so the follow-up observations should bring confirmation of the existence of this object one way or another.
The companion star also has a name (and no, it isn’t Lydia). “Betelgeuse” actually translates from Arabic to “the hand of al-Jawza”, referencing a mythological figure which was fully articulated in the sky by ancient astronomers. Her hands, feet, head, hair, and other features are illustrated by stars in the Jawza celestial complex, also known as the Orion constellation. Howell felt it was only appropriate to keep with this theme in naming Betelgeuse’s companion, and as such, it is now called “Siwarha”, or “her bracelet.” Betelgeuse and Siwarha will eventually merge.
While Betelgeuse isn’t expected to go supernova for at least another 10,000 years, it still might be best to not risk summoning anything by saying its name three times.
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