Last week, NASA made public photographs of a previously unseen occurrence in which the star Betelgeuse blasted its top off and ejected a massive amount of its surface matter. Surface Mass Ejection (SME) is the name of the occurrence, and the space agency estimates that the ejection had 400 billion times the mass of a typical solar flare from our Sun.
According to the organisation, ‘These new findings provide insights into how red stars lose mass toward the end of their lifetimes as their nuclear fusion furnaces burn out, before exploding as supernovae.’
The occurrence was described by scientists as’stellar evolution’ being observed in real-time. Many people were shocked to see a star eject such substantial portions of its physical structure. While scientists have stated that the unusually huge amount of ejection in Betelgeuse doesn’t mean it is about to blow up or die anytime soon, it surely is a phenomenon that needs more understanding.
Red supergiant star Betelgeuse can be found in the right shoulder of the Orion constellation. A ‘redgiant’ designation indicates that Betelgeuse is rapidly using up its fuel and expanding to a size of about 1.6 billion kilometres in diameter.
Betelgeuse’s observation could help researchers better grasp what happens to stars as they near the end of their lives.
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