{"id":218467,"date":"2025-07-22T08:24:50","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T13:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/hidden-neighbor-astronomers-confirm-long-suspected-companion-star-near-betelgeuse"},"modified":"2025-07-22T08:24:50","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T13:24:50","slug":"hidden-neighbor-astronomers-confirm-long-suspected-companion-star-near-betelgeuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/hidden-neighbor-astronomers-confirm-long-suspected-companion-star-near-betelgeuse","title":{"rendered":"Hidden neighbor: Astronomers confirm long-suspected companion star near Betelgeuse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IMEN00_SenY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the night sky, and the closest red supergiant to Earth. It has an enormous volume, spanning a radius around 700 times that of the sun. Despite only being ten million years old, which is considered young by astronomy standards, it\u2019s late in its life.<\/p>\n<p>Located in the shoulder of the constellation Orion, people have observed Betelgeuse with the naked eye <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1709.04634\" target=\"_blank\">for millennia<\/a>, noticing that the star changes in brightness over time. Astronomers established that Betelgeuse has a main period of variability of around 400 days and a more extended secondary period of around six years.<\/p>\n<p>In 2019 and 2020, there was a steep decrease in Betelgeuse\u2019s brightness\u2014an event referred to as the \u201cGreat Dimming.\u201d The event led some to believe that a supernova death was quickly approaching, but scientists were able to determine the dimming was actually caused by a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2021-06-mystery-betelgeuse-dip-brightness.html\">large cloud of dust<\/a> ejected from Betelgeuse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the night sky, and the closest red supergiant to Earth. It has an enormous volume, spanning a radius around 700 times that of the sun. Despite only being ten million years old, which is considered young by astronomy standards, it\u2019s late in its life. Located in the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}