Examining the Giant Star, Betelgeuse

“The giant star Betelgeuse churns out gas bubbles that match its own size — and that’s how it can shed an entire solar mass in 10,000 years. That according to the sharpest-ever images of Orion’s second-brightest star, released this week by the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO)…

Betelgeuse, the second brightest star in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter), is a red supergiant, one of the biggest stars known, and almost 1,000 times larger than our Sun. It is also one of the most luminous stars known, emitting more light than 100,000 Suns. Red supergiants still hold several unsolved mysteries. One of them is just how these behemoths shed such tremendous quantities of material — about the mass of the Sun — in only 10,000 years. With an age of only a few million years, Betelgeuse is already nearing the end of its life and is soon doomed to explode as a supernova. When it does, the supernova should be seen easily from Earth, even in broad daylight.”

source: universetoday.com