All About Betelgeuse. The Most Conspicuous Drop in Brightness From a Century Now
In the last four months, the red supergiant in Orion has lost about one magnitude, reaching the same brightness as Bellatrix. Despite this remarkable drop in brightness, there is no indication of an imminent supernova explosion
Betelgeuse is one of the most easily recognizable stars in the sky due to its vivid orange-red color and the position it occupies in Orion, less than ten degrees north-east of the Belt, which, with its three aligned stars, represents the center of the constellation.
Known and admired since ancient times, it is one of the most observed and studied stars of all time. The photoelectric measurements of its brightness began almost a century ago. With their superior reliability compared to purely visual observations, they have made it possible to reconstruct with high precision the cycles of variation in brightness that have occurred over the years. Betelgeuse is, in fact, a semi-regular variable with complex oscillations due to the various overlaps of two different periods, one of the approximate duration of 5.9 years and the other of 425 days.
