For a while now, astronomers have suspected that Betelgeuse has a companion. And they might have found it. If it really exists, though, it won’t be around for long.

Betelgeuse is a supergiant. It’s about 15 times as massive as the Sun, hundreds of times wider than the Sun, and tens of thousands of times brighter.

There’s a wobble in the star’s light that lasts about six years – possibly caused by the gravity of a smaller companion star. A team looked for the companion in 2020 and 2024. The team stacked thousands of short-exposure images together, producing a sharp view of the system.

The researchers didn’t see anything in 2020 – but they hadn’t expected to. The two stars were predicted to be too close together to tell them apart. But the team did see the companion in 2024, when the stars were farther apart.

If the star really exists, it would be a little bigger and heavier than the Sun. But it’s so close to Betelgeuse that it’s enveloped in the supergiant’s outer atmosphere. That’s pulling the star closer in. Eventually, it should get so close that the gravity of Betelgeuse will rip it apart. And even if that doesn’t happen, before long Betelgeuse will explode as a supernova – bad news for both stars.

Betelgeuse is the bright orange shoulder of Orion the hunter. It’s a third of the way up in the east-southeast at nightfall, to the left of Orion’s Belt.

More about Orion tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield