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Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Gigantic bubbles boiling on the surface of star Betelgeuse
Giant star Betelgeuse shed the equivalent mass of the Earth every year but how do it does is not properly understood. Using state of the art imaging techniques, astronomers have revealed a vast plume of gas and gigantic bubbles boiling on the surface of star Betelgeuse. The new technique will provide clues to how they shed the mass?
The images show that the whole outer shell of the star is not shedding material evenly in all directions, which may be due to either large scale gas motions caused by heating, or because of the star's rotation. Betelgeuse's atmosphere is bouncing vigorously up and down in bubbles that are as large as the supergiant star itself, and could be responsible for the ejection of the massive plume into space.
Betelgeuse is the nearest star to Earth.
