![]() "To explain the 2,200-day period as fundamental mode requires a much larger radius than the case of fitting the 420-day with fundamental mode," Saio wrote in an email. Such a scenario, however, requires Betelgeuse to be up to one third wider for these models of its evolution to work, Saio told in an email. The team led by Saio therefore proposed that this 2,200-day oscillation could, in fact, represent Betelgeuse's main pulsation mode while the 420-day brightness variation could be a secondary quirk. One of those additional variations takes place on a 2,200-day cycle, and astronomers have no explanation for it. ![]() There are other quirks in Betelgeuse's behavior, also appearing on a regular basis, which astronomers attribute to additional turbulent processes taking place inside the dying star. (Image credit: Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) The area of the head of Orion with the large Lambda Orionis nebulosity surrounding the star Meissa at top, with Betelgeuse (left) and Bellatrix (right) at bottom. Astronomers attribute this brightening to the periodical expansion of the star's envelope, or roughly spherical outer region, in a phenomenon known as the fundamental mode. ![]() Most obviously, Betelgeuse's brightness swings up and down every 420 days. This could be possible as Betelgeuse is known to pulsate - expand and shrink, dim and brighten up - at regular intervals. In the new controversial study, a team of astronomers led by Hideyuki Saio from the Tohoku University in Japan suggests that Betelgeuse is larger than what most researchers believe. To measure its diameter is therefore not easy, yet, the case for determining Betelgeuse's remaining lifetime rests on the star's size. That's because instead of being one rather smooth ball of plasma, Betelgeuse is a lumpy clump of boiling gas bubbles shrouded in burped out dust clouds. However, the exact width of Betelgeuse is hard to measure. If it were to sit at the center of our solar system, the scorching gas in its outer atmosphere would reach far enough to engulf even the planet Jupiter. Astronomers know that Betelgeuse is huge.
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