![]() ![]() Some of the other structures close to the star are still relatively compact, looking like little knots and nebulous features. Also, they're not physically connected to the star, but rather, appear to have been thrown out and are moving away. ![]() These arcs look like the solar prominences from our own Sun, only on a much grander scale. Giant arcs of plasma surround the star at distances from it that are thousands of times farther away than the Earth is from the Sun. It has had multiple, giant eruptions," explained Humphreys. It's one of the largest stars that we know of-a very evolved, red supergiant. If it replaced the Sun in our own solar system, the bloated monster would extend out for hundreds of millions of miles, between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. The enormous red hypergiant is 300,000 times brighter than our Sun. Massive ejections of material which correspond to its very deep fading, which is probably due to dust that temporarily blocks light from the star," said Humphreys. "In VY Canis Majoris we see something similar, but on a much larger scale. For Betelgeuse, the dimming corresponded to a gaseous outflow that may have formed dust, which briefly obstructed some of Betelgeuse's light from our view, creating the dimming effect. "VY Canis Majoris is behaving a lot like Betelgeuse on steroids," explained the study's leader, astrophysicist Roberta Humphreys of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.Īs with Betelgeuse, Hubble data suggest the answer for why this bigger star is dimming. New findings from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope suggest the same processes that occurred on Betelgeuse are happening in this hypergiant, but on a much grander scale. The red hypergiant VY Canis Majoris-which is far larger, more massive, and more violent than Betelgeuse-experiences much longer, dimmer periods that last for years. ![]() Now, astronomers have turned their sights toward a monster star in the adjoining constellation Canis Major, the Great Dog. Last year, astronomers were puzzled when Betelguese, the bright red supergiant star in the constellation Orion, dramatically faded, but then recovered. Four Successful Women Behind the Hubble Space Telescope's Achievements.Characterizing Planets Around Other Stars.Measuring the Universe's Expansion Rate. ![]()
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