J/other/Nat/594.ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/other/Nat/594.365CDSMontarges M.Cannon E.Lagadec E.de Koter A.Kervella P.,Sanchez-Bermudez J.Paladini C.Cantalloube F.Decin L.Scicluna P.,Kravchenko K.Dupree A.K.Ridgway S.Wittkowski M.Anugu N.Norris R.,Rau G.Perrin G.Chiavassa A.Kraus S.Monnier J.D.Millour F.,Le Bouquin J.B.Haubois X.Lopez B.Stee P.Danchi W.2021-08-14T12:26:11Z2021-06-16T16:10:57ZCDS support team

CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France

cds-question@unistra.frsupergiant-starsm-starslate-type-starsRed supergiants represent the most common final stage of the evolution of stars with initial masses between 8 and 30-35 times the mass of the Sun. During this phase of lifetime ~10^5 yrs, they experience substantial mass loss of unknown mechanism (Arroyo-Torres et al., 2015A&A...575A..50A). This mass loss can affect their evolutionary path, collapse, future supernova light curve, and ultimate fate as a neutron star or a black hole. From November 2019 to March 2020, the second closest red supergiant (RSG, 222^+48^_-34_pc) Betelgeuse experienced a historic dimming of its visible brightness, witnessed worldwide. Usually between 0.1 and 1.0mag, it went down to 1.614+/-0.008mag around 7-13 February 2020. Here we report high angular resolution observations showing that the southern hemisphere of the star was ten times darker than usual in the visible. Observations and modeling support the scenario of a dust clump recently formed in the vicinity of the star due to a local temperature decrease in a cool patch appearing on the photosphere. The directly imaged brightness variations of Betelgeuse evolved on a timescale of weeks. This event suggests that an inhomogeneous component of red supergiant mass loss is linked to a very contrasted and rapidly changing photosphere.2021Natur.594..365Mhttps://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/other/Nat/594.365CatalogResearchIsServedByTAP VizieR generic serviceIsServedByConesearch servicehttps://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.htmlhttps://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/other/Nat/594.365https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/other/Nat/594.365http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/other/Nat/594.365https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/other/Nat/594.365https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/other/Nat/594.365http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/other/Nat/594.365GETtext/xml+votablehttps://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tapCone search capability for table J/other/Nat/594.365/list (List of fits images)https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/other/Nat/594.365/list?https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/other/Nat/594.365/list?http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/other/Nat/594.365/list?GETtext/xml+votable180.050000true78.63494-8.202110.005555555555555556Associated datahttps://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/assocdata/?obs_collection=J/other/Nat/594.3656/22787 23611https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/moc/J/other/Nat/594.365?format=asciidefaultJ/other/Nat/594.365/listList of fits imagesrecnoRecord number assigned by the VizieR team. Should Not be used for identification.meta.recordintRAJ2000Right Ascension of center (J2000)degpos.eq.ra;meta.mainDEJ2000Declination of center (J2000)degpos.eq.dec;meta.mainscaleScale of the imagearcsec/pixinstr.scalefloatNxNumber of pixels along X-axismeta.numberintNyNumber of pixels along Y-axismeta.numberintObs.dateObservation datestime.epoch;obsnullablesizeSize of FITS fileKibytephys.size;meta.fitsintFileNameName of FITS file, in subdirectory fitsmeta.id;meta.fitscharTitleTitle of the FITS filemeta.title;meta.fitscharAssocDataAssociated Data web pagemeta.ref.urlchar