Hubble data showcases new insight into an aging star's life cycle

Images and graph courtesy of NASA

NASA has received data (pictured above) from its famous Hubble Space Telescope (HST) that showcases the state of the star Betelgeuse both during and after a coronal mass ejection (CME).

Originally captured in 2019 and 2020, the images showcase Betelgeuse, a star making up the "shoulder" of the constellation "Orion",  undergoing a particularly violent CME as part of its life cycle as a red supergiant star while the graph shows the effects the ejected particles had on the star's brightness, nicknamed the "Great Dimming" by observers.

The event, classified by scientists as Surface Mass Ejection (SME) due to its depth and size, was estimated by scientists to be almost 400 million times as powerful as an average CME from our sun, something never before seen in the field of astronomy.

"It's a totally new phenomenon that we can observe directly and resolve surface details with Hubble."  assistant director of Harvard's Center for Astrophysics Andrea Dupree said. 

Although Hubble is credited as the main contributor, the STELLA robotic observatory, the Fred L. Whipple Observatory's Tillinghast Reflector Echelle Spectrograph (TRES), NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft (STEREO-A) and the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) all contributed their own stereoscopic and imaging data.