Atmosphere of Betelgeuse before and during the Great Dimming event revealed by tomography

TL;DR

This study uses a novel tomographic technique to analyze Betelgeuse's atmosphere, revealing that increased molecular opacity in the upper layers caused its recent dimming event.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new tomographic method to probe Betelgeuse's atmospheric dynamics and links increased molecular opacity to its Great Dimming event.

Findings

Increased molecular opacity caused the dimming.

Atmospheric velocity fields correlate with brightness changes.

The technique provides insights into stellar atmosphere variability.

Abstract

Despite being the best studied red supergiant star in our Galaxy, the physics behind the photometric variability and mass loss of Betelgeuse is poorly understood. Moreover, recently the star has experienced an unusual fading with its visual magnitude reaching a historical minimum. We investigate the nature of this event with the help of a recently developed tomographic technique. Tomography allows us to probe different depths in the stellar atmosphere and to recover the corresponding disk-averaged velocity field. We apply the tomographic method to a few-year time-series high-resolution spectroscopic observations of Betelgeuse in order to relate its atmospheric dynamics to the photometric variability. Our results show that a sudden increase of the molecular opacity in the cooler upper atmosphere of Betelgeuse is likely the reason of the observed unusual decrease of the star's brightness.