The huge red supergiant star Betelgeuse blew off a huge chunk of its mass in 2019, creating a cloud of dust which obscured its light and caused it to dim.
One of the brightest stars in the sky, the nearby red supergiant Betelgeuse, has been the source of fascination in the last few years as it dimmed and then re-brightened dramatically. Now, new data from the Hubble Space Telescope shows that the star blew off a huge chunk of its mass in 2019, creating a cloud of dust that obscured its light and caused the dimming effect.
The explosion of such a big chunk of matter is a rare event called a surface mass ejection, similar to the coronal mass ejection events seen in our sun and other stars but much, much bigger.
