Astronomers Unexpectedly Capture 'Great Dimming' of Supergiant Star Betelgeuse (cnet.com) 21
In early 2020, the distant supergiant star, 700 light-years away known as Betelgeuse experienced an odd uneven dimming, leaving the astronomy community scrambling to explain what happened. In a new study recently published in the journal Nature, a trio of astronomers managed to confirm some of the earlier explanations thanks to a Japanese weather satellite, Himawari-8, which had Betelgeuse lurking in the background of its images. CNET reports: Himawari-8 is, as the name suggests, the eighth version of the Himawari satellite operated by Japan's Meteorological Agency. It operates in geostationary orbit, at a distance of 22,236 miles above the equator. This is more than 90 times further away than the International Space Station. From that position, the satellite snaps optical and infrared images of the whole Earth once every 10 minutes, predominantly to help forecast the weather across Asia and the Western Pacific. For instance, it snapped a ton of images of the Tongan volcano eruption that occurred on Jan. 15. However, looking through images stretching back to 2017, the trio of Japanese researchers went looking for a pinprick of light that would be Betelgeuse, lurking in space behind our brilliant blue and green marble. They found it.
Studying that pinprick of light, the researchers came to the same conclusion as their predecessors: Betelgeuse dimmed because of both dust and some natural variability in its light. That's not all that exciting, but it's good confirmation we're all on the right track, and it's exactly what the process of science is all about. What is intriguing is the fact a weather satellite was able to provide this data in the first place. It could be a big deal for astronomers. Building and launching new space telescopes isn't a cheap or easy endeavor and you have to book yourself a rocket. But... there are already satellites orbiting the Earth that might be able to do a similar job.
Studying that pinprick of light, the researchers came to the same conclusion as their predecessors: Betelgeuse dimmed because of both dust and some natural variability in its light. That's not all that exciting, but it's good confirmation we're all on the right track, and it's exactly what the process of science is all about. What is intriguing is the fact a weather satellite was able to provide this data in the first place. It could be a big deal for astronomers. Building and launching new space telescopes isn't a cheap or easy endeavor and you have to book yourself a rocket. But... there are already satellites orbiting the Earth that might be able to do a similar job.
Re: Oh no (Score:3, Funny)
Odd uneven dimming (Score:4, Funny)
That's true: odd is not even.
Re: (Score:2)
Say isn't that (Score:3)
where Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox are from?
I suspect it's a Hrung (Score:2)
Unlikely Satellite Captures Betelgeuse Dimming. (Score:2)
Would've been a much more useful title :P
They didn't 'unexpectedly capture' it, they captured it from an unexpected source.
Another poorly written, bad conclusion article (Score:2)
This conclusion/statement is complete garbage:
"Building and launching new space telescopes isn't a cheap or easy endeavor and you have to book yourself a rocket. But... there are already satellites orbiting the Earth that might be able to do a similar job"
Since new space telescopes are being made to image stars and galaxies billions of light years away, not 700 light years away that I can be easily imaged from the ground with just about anything.
Either the poster does not understand much of anything about i
Re: (Score:3)
Building a new telescope would solve their problem (observing one star for several years to look for variations) in a few years. Using existing images allows them to do the analysis now.
The LSST/Vera Rubin telescope is designed to image the entire sky every few days; it's the first observatory that can do that. Otherwise, if you want to look at historical changes to stars, you're left with combing though telescope archives (with 800 professional observatories, that's a big task) and hope you can find images
Re: (Score:2)
They also have extremely limited dynamic range. They picked up Betelgeuse because the dimming was so dramatic. That sort of thing is only going to work on fairly nearby stars, and generally ones that are already known to be variable.
There are a bunch of existing ground-based small telescope networks that aim to do sky surveillance, mostly for catching supernovas, but apparently they might be useful for following up on transiting exoplanets too.
Betelgeuse is a very bright star (Score:1)
Your naked eye can see it and your cell phone camera can probably see it.
A satellite to observe only Betelgeuse (or a similarly bright star) does not cost anywhere near what a "space telescope" costs. I think about 10 years ago NASA literally flew a (modified) cell phone in space.
wide field space telescope (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Google "roman space telescope".
Re: (Score:3)
WFIRST/Nancy Grace Roman sort of does that. It's a Hubble-sized mirror with 100x the field of view. I don't think they plan to do regular all-sky surveys with this though, unlike the LSST, which is a land-based telescope.
That's just the invasion swarm blotting it out (Score:4, Informative)
Since we were able to observe it in this manner, they obviously don't have faster-than-light drives.
They should arrive some time within the next few hundred to few thousand years, depending on how close to light speed they're able to achieve.
Oh shit, it's astrophage! (Score:1)