Between late 2019 and early 2020 , the red supergiant star Betelgeuse experienced the so - call " keen Dimming " . The mavin ’s brightness dropped short and remarkably . It became so wispy , that it dropped off thetop 20 brightest starsin the night sky list . It was so dramatic that even in city , mass could see that Orion was missing the star that makes his shoulder joint .
Theleading explanationfor the extreme slur case was a combination of the star ’s periodical magnetic variation aggregate with a sudden release of dust . New observations , published inNature Astronomy , confirm that scenario . And they come from a very unlikely seed . A weather satellite .
Himawari-8 is a Nipponese conditions satellite that has been in geostationary arena since 2014 . Lead author of the raw newspaper Daisuke Taniguchi and colleagues discovered that Betelegeuse photobombed several atmospheric condition images contain by the satellite as it goes around Earth . The satellite has legal instrument that see our planet and the rest of the cosmos in mid - infrared and the fact that it takes so many photos at regular intervals gave the team an melodic theme .
There must be many figure and data in the archive related to Betelgeuse . The team was capable to accumulate observations of Betelgeuse between 2017 and 2021 and it provided some very insightful results . According to the data collected by Himawari-8 , Betelgeuse ’s temperature dropped by about 140 ° C ( 252 F ° ) . But that was only responsible for half of the change .
The other half come from the junk . The Nipponese planet has a high sensitivity for particular wavelength bands where signals from water supply molecules are solid . It is designed to study water system in the Earth ’s upper ambience but it turns out to be so well that it was able-bodied to detect H2O around Betelgeuse too . And the squad chase this over the years .
Other mote , such as silicon oxide , could muddle up the signaling that the team saw as an concentration signaling from the water particle , but the astronomers think that even with limitations , the drop related to the dimming is clearly there .
Water molecules and the many other dust-covered components around Betelgeuse contributed to the star appearing fainter . And harmonize to this work , the free fall in temperature and the dust contribute to the Great Dimming in equal measure .
The squad was able also to collect data on four other stars . Their workplace shows that weather orbiter , due to their high - precision instruments and locating , can be used for much more than cut across clouds and cheerfulness . They can also be used for astronomical observation without any special adroitness , getting more out of the stock data they collect .
