A dusty veil shading Betelgeuse during its Great Dimming

Abstract

Red supergiants are the most common final evolutionary stage of stars that have initial masses between 8 and 35 times that of the Sun. During this stage, which lasts roughly 100,000 years1, red supergiants experience substantial mass loss. However, the mechanism for this mass loss is unknown. Mass loss may affect the evolutionary path, collapse and future supernova light curve of a red supergiant, and its ultimate fate as either a neutron star or a black hole. From November 2019 to March 2020, Betelgeuse - the second-closest red supergiant to Earth (roughly 220 parsecs, or 724 light years, away) - experienced a historic dimming of its visible brightness. Usually having an apparent magnitude between 0.1 and 1.0, its visual brightness decreased to 1.614 +/- 0.008 magnitudes around 7-13 February 2020 - an event referred to as Betelgeuse's Great Dimming. Here we report high-angular-resolution observations showing that the southern hemisphere of Betelgeuse was ten times darker than usual in the visible spectrum during its Great Dimming. Observations and modelling support a scenario in which a dust clump formed recently in the vicinity of the star, owing to a local temperature decrease in a cool patch that appeared on the photosphere. The directly imaged brightness variations of Betelgeuse evolved on a timescale of weeks. Our findings suggest that a component of mass loss from red supergiants is inhomogeneous, linked to a very contrasted and rapidly changing photosphere

References in corpus (23)

• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• Confined Dense Circumstellar Material Surrounding a Regular Type II Supernova: The Unique Flash-Spectroscopy Event of SN 2013fs
• Red supergiants as potential Type IIn supernova progenitors: Spatially resolved 4.6 micron CO emission around VY CMa and Betelgeuse
• The impact of mass-loss on the evolution and pre-supernova properties of red supergiants
• The dust condensation sequence in red super-giant stars
• The 3D Morphology of VY Canis Majoris. I The Kinematics of the Ejecta
• The enigmatic nature of the circumstellar envelope and bow shock surrounding Betelgeuse as revealed by Herschel. I. Evidence of clumps, multiple arcs, and a linear bar-like structure
• The close circumstellar environment of Betelgeuse - V. Rotation velocity and molecular envelope properties from ALMA
• What causes the large extensions of red-supergiant atmospheres? Comparisons of interferometric observations with 1-D hydrostatic, 3-D convection, and 1-D pulsating model atmospheres
• Endurance of SN 2005ip after a decade: X-rays, radio, and H-alpha like SN 1988Z require long-lived pre-supernova mass loss
• Near-IR Spectra of Red Supergiants and Giants. I- Models with Solar and with Mixing-Induced Surface Abundance Ratios
• The close circumstellar environment of Betelgeuse - II. Diffraction-limited spectro-imaging from 7.76 to 19.50 microns with VLT/VISIR
• Stellar atmospheric parameters for 754 spectra from the X-shooter Spectral Library
• The Photospheric Temperatures of Betelgeuse during the Great Dimming of 2019/2020: No New Dust Required
• An Updated 2017 Astrometric Solution for Betelgeuse
• Spatially Resolved Ultraviolet Spectroscopy of the Great Dimming of Betelgeuse
• Exploring the origin of clumpy dust clouds around cool giants. A global 3D RHD model of a dust-forming M-type AGB star
• Atmosphere of Betelgeuse before and during the Great Dimming event revealed by tomography
• Betelgeuse fainter in the sub-millimetre too: an analysis of JCMT and APEX monitoring during the recent optical minimum
• An image-plane algorithm for JWST's non-redundant aperture mask data
• The SPHERE data center: a reference for high contrast imaging processing
• Imaging the outward motions of clumpy dust clouds around the red supergiant Antares with VLT/VISIR
• Differential Speckle Polarimetry of Betelgeuse in 2019-2020: the rise is different from the fall

Cited by in corpus (54)

• Numerical Simulations of Convective 3-Dimensional Red Supergiant Envelopes
• Evolved Massive Stars at Low-metallicity V. Mass-Loss Rate of Red Supergiant Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The Great Dimming of Betelgeuse: a Surface Mass Ejection (SME) and its Consequences
• Atmosphere of Betelgeuse before and during the Great Dimming event revealed by tomography
• Episodic Gaseous Outflows and Mass Loss from Red Supergiants
• The Time-Averaged Mass-Loss Rates of Red Supergiants As Revealed by their Luminosity Functions in M31 and M33
• ALMA detection of CO rotational line emission in red supergiant stars of the massive young star cluster RSGC1 -- Determination of a new mass-loss rate prescription for red supergiants
• Establishing a mass-loss rate relation for red supergiants in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• 3D MHD astrospheres: applications to IRC-10414 and Betelgeuse
• The Great Dimming of Betelgeuse seen by the Himawari-8 meteorological satellite
• Is Betelgeuse Really Rotating? Synthetic ALMA Observations of Large-scale Convection in 3D Simulations of Red Supergiants
• The impact of winds on the spectral appearance of Red Supergiants
• Three-dimensional imaging of convective cells in the photosphere of Betelgeuse
• The effect of mass loss in models of red supergiants in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The circumstellar material around the Type IIP SN 2021yja
• An Exceptional Dimming Event for a Massive, Cool Supergiant in M51
• Atmospheric molecular blobs shape up circumstellar envelopes of AGB stars
• Analysis of photometric and spectroscopic variability of red supergiant Betelgeuse
• The VLT/SPHERE view of the ATOMIUM cool evolved star sample. I. Overview: Sample characterization through polarization analysis
• The Great Dimming of the hypergiant star RW Cephei: CHARA Array images and spectral analysis
• Long Term Evolution of Surface Features on the Red Supergiant AZ Cyg
• Searching for TESS Photometric Variability of Possible JWST Spectrophotometric Standard Stars
• The extended atmosphere and circumstellar environment of the cool evolved star VX Sagittarii as seen by MATISSE
• History of two mass loss processes in VY CMa. Fast outflows carving older ejecta
• The Great Dimming of Betelgeuse: the photosphere as revealed by tomography over the past 15 years
• Bringing Stellar Evolution & Feedback Together: Summary of proposals from the Lorentz Center Workshop, 2022
• Investigating the metallicity dependence of the mass-loss rate relation of red supergiants
• The dusty circumstellar environment of Betelgeuse during the Great Dimming as seen by VLTI/MATISSE
• Episodic mass loss in the very luminous red supergiant [W60] B90 in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Investigating episodic mass loss in evolved massive stars: II. Physical properties of red supergiants at subsolar metallicity
• Multiple components in the molecular outflow of the red supergiant NML Cyg
• Reconstructing the mid-infrared environment in the stellar merger remnant V838 Monocerotis
• Comment on the feasibility of carbon burning in Betelgeuse: a response to "The evolutionary stage of Betelgeuse inferred from its pulsation periods," arXiv:2306.00287
• ATOMIUM: Continuum emission and evidence of dust enhancement from binary motion
• The height of convective plumes in the red supergiant $\mu$ Cep
• The effect of winds on atmospheric layers of red supergiants II. Modelling VLTI/GRAVITY and MATISSE observations of AH Sco, KW Sgr, V602 Car, CK Car and V460 Car
• Did a close tidal encounter cause the Great Dimming of Betelgeuse?
• Investigating episodic mass loss in evolved massive stars: III. Spectroscopy of dusty massive stars in three northern galaxies
• Spatially Resolved Observations of Betelgeuse at 7mm and 1.3cm Just Prior to the Great Dimming
• Investigating dusty Red Supergiant outflows in Westerlund 1 with 3D Hydrodynamic simulations
• Betelgeuse's Buddy: X-Ray Constraints on the Nature of $\alpha$ Ori B
• Chromospheric activity and photospheric variation of $\alpha$ Ori during the great dimming event in 2020
• Betelgeuse, the Prototypical Red Supergiant
• Modeling extinction and reddening effects by circumstellar dust in the Betelgeuse envelope in the presence of radiative torque disruption
• An Optical Daytime Astronomy Pathfinder for the Huntsman Telescope
• SiO maser polarization and magnetic field in evolved cool stars
• The stellar occultation by (319) Leona on 13 September 2023 in preparation for the occultation of Betelgeuse
• The variability of Betelgeuse explained by surface convection
• Stellar evolution through the Red Supergiant phase
• Red Supergiants in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies
• VLTI-GRAVITY measurements of cool evolved stars: II. Pulsation properties and mass-loss process of the Mira star R Car and the red supergiant VX Sgr
• Another one bites the dust -- how red supergiants keep surprising us
• Evidence for dynamical changes in Betelgeuse using multi-wavelength data
• Locating Red Supergiants in the Galaxy NGC 6822