A few months ago, astronomers confirmed something exciting: Betelgeuse has a companion star named Betelbuddy. This little star surprised scientists with its characteristics as they studied it closely.
According to a study in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope for their investigation. They discovered that Betelbuddy is likely a young stellar object (YSO), similar in size to our Sun. This aligns with earlier predictions that suggested this star is much younger than Betelgeuse, which is nearing the end of its life. However, the new data challenged many previous assumptions about what Betelbuddy was made of.
The journey to find Betelbuddy was urgent, as researchers only had a short window before it vanished behind Betelgeuse for the next two years. Remarkably, the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii captured an image of Betelbuddy, despite the huge brightness difference between it and Betelgeuse.
To break it down, Betelgeuse is roughly 700 times larger than our Sun and thousands of times brighter. So, scientists had to find creative ways to study Betelbuddy, using X-ray imaging and UV spectroscopy. O’Grady, a leading author on the study, mentioned how extraordinary it was to confirm Betelbuddy’s existence after so many challenges.
As researchers analyzed the data, they debated what type of star Betelbuddy really is. Initially, they thought it might be a neutron star or a white dwarf, which would suggest a different evolutionary path for this star system. But the evidence pointed toward Betelbuddy being a young star without signs of accretion, setting it apart from those possibilities.
With Betelbuddy being much smaller than Betelgeuse, it defies the typical idea that binary stars have similar masses. Betelgeuse is estimated to be 15 to 18 times more massive than its companion. This revelation opens the door to a new category of binary stars with very different mass ratios.
In the coming years, Betelbuddy will be out of sight, not appearing again until late 2027. But when it returns, astronomers will dive in to learn even more. The discovery of Betelbuddy not only enriches our knowledge of the universe but also highlights the surprising complexities of stellar relationships.
For more in-depth information on similar discoveries, you can explore NASA’s Astrophysics research.
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Astrophysics,Binary stars,Chandra,hubble telescope,Stellar evolution
