Milky Way's 'brightest' star losing its luminosity, astronomers puzzled

The European Southern Observatory on February 14 said that astronomers had captured pictures of the Betelgeuse star. According to reports, Betegeuse had been losing its luminosity over the past couple of months. The dimming of one of the brightest stars in the Orion constellation puzzled officials with a few stating that Betelgeuse could explode whereas others said that it was a passing condition.

The star was also changing shape

According to reports. the images not only showcased the fading star but also showed the changing shape. The ESO further added that the astronomers used the observatory's biggest telescope to find out more about the incident. The study to observe the fading star started in December 2019 with an aim to understand why is it losing its luminosity.

According to reports, ESO said that Beteguese's light had started fading since the end of 2019, adding that the light currently stands as 36 per cent of its normal brightness. The observatory further added that the star will become a supernova but the astronomers are of the opinion that it is something that will not happen now. Researchers are of the opinion that either the surface of the star is cooling down or the dust is ejecting dust towards them.

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Star was ejected by a supermassive black hole

Around five million years ago, a star was ejected by a supermassive black hole the heart at the Milky Way at a staggering speed of 3.7 million mph (6 million km/hour).

The newfound super-fast star named S5-HVS1 is located in the constellation of Grus. The star was observed to be moving ten times faster than most of the stars of the galaxy. S5-HVS1 was discovered by Sergey Koposov of the Carnegie Mellon University as part of the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey. The discovery also appeared in the monthly Journal Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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