Tag

Companion Star

All articles tagged with #companion star

Astronomers Capture Clear Image of Betelgeuse's Hidden Companion Siwarha
space25 days ago

Astronomers Capture Clear Image of Betelgeuse's Hidden Companion Siwarha

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope with the SPHERE instrument, astronomers obtained the clearest image yet of Betelgeuse's suspected companion, Betelgeuse B (Siwarha), estimated at 2–3 solar masses. While it remains to confirm whether the companion is gravitationally bound, the discovery reshapes our understanding of Betelgeuse’s environment and could influence models of its future evolution and mass loss as it heads toward a supernova in the distant future.

Wake of a Hidden Stellar Partner Reveals Betelgeuse's Secret Neighbor
science-space7 months ago

Wake of a Hidden Stellar Partner Reveals Betelgeuse's Secret Neighbor

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories have found direct evidence of a hidden companion star to Betelgeuse, Siwarha, whose orbital wake through the red supergiant’s atmosphere explains Betelgeuse’s six-year brightness cycle and other variability, with the wake matching predictions from an orbiter that completes a six-year orbit and potentially merging with Betelgeuse in the distant future; findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal.

astronomy3 years ago

Green Bank Telescope discovers binary pulsar with 53-minute orbit

Radio observations of the binary millisecond pulsar PSR J1953+1844 (M71E) show it to have an orbital period of 53.3 minutes and a companion with a mass of ~0.07 M⊙. It is a faint X-ray source and located 2.5 arcminutes from the center of the globular cluster M71. This discovery suggests the existence of a population of millisecond pulsars with moderate mass companions and very short orbital periods.