Andrea Dupree

We've never before seen a huge mass ejection of the surface of a star. We are left with something going on that we don't completely understand.

With Only Hubble, we see the material as Only Hubble left the star's visible surface and moved out through the atmosphere, before the dust formed that caused the star to appear to dim, only Hubble gives us this evidence of what led up to the dimming.

All stars are losing material to the interstellar medium, and we don't know how this material is lost, we know that other hotter luminous stars lose material and it quickly turns to dust making the star appear much fainter. But in over a century-and-a-half, this has not happened to Betelgeuse. It's very unique.

No one knows how a star behaves in the weeks before it explodes, and there were some ominous predictions that Betelgeuse was ready to become a supernova, chances are, however, that it will not explode during our lifetime, but who knows ?

Betelgeuse typically goes through brightness cycles lasting around 420 days, and since the previous minimum happened in February 2020, this new dimming is over a year early.