The changing face of Betelgeuse

Details The changing face of Betelgeuse The changing face of Betelgeuse

Nov 1997

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1997mnras.291..819w&link_type=abstract

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 291, p. 819

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

30

Red Giant Stars, Supergiant Stars, Stellar Luminosity, Interferometry, Photosphere

Scientific paper

We describe a sequence of four optical interferometric observations of Betelgeuse, obtained using the nonredundant aperture mask method at the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope on La Palma between 1994 November and 1995 January. The observations reveal complex asymmetries in the brightness distribution of the star, detected at a very high SNR. Adequate modeling of the intensity structure requires at least three bright spots superposed on the stellar disk. Changes in the relative flux and positions of the spots are evident over the 8-wk period spanning the observations. The brightness and maximum size of these features are consistent with convective surface hotspots. Simultaneous photometry of the integrated light of Betelgeuse shows a large and rapid dimming over the same period, which is not correlated with any change in the bright features. We deduce that, in this instance, the photometric variation did not result from localized convective activity associated with the spots. The interferometric data also show strong evidence for structure on a scale much larger than the photospheric diameter, which has not been present in previous observations over recent years. We attribute this new component to scattering from a newly formed dust halo, with a minimum angular diameter of approximately 0.3 arcsec.

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