Scientists at the University of Minnesota have revealed why the red hypergiant VY Canis Majoris in the constellation Canis Major is periodically fading. According to astronomers, the mysterious phenomenon is happening for the same reasons as the recent drop in Betelgeuse’s brightness. This is reported in an article published in The Astronomical Journal. The study is summarized in a press release at Phys.org.
New data from the Hubble Space Telescope suggests that the same processes occur in the hypergiant as at Betelgeuse, but on a much larger scale. We are talking about the release of gases that form a dust cloud that obscures the star’s disk and absorbs some of the light. Due to the star’s large size, blackout periods can last for years.
VY Canis Majoris is 300 thousand times larger than the Sun and exceeds the size of Jupiter’s orbit. Giant plasma arcs burst from the surface of the supergiant star at a distance greater than the distance from the Sun to the Earth. They are similar to prominences, however, they move away from the hypergiant, and are not held above its surface by a magnetic field. Researchers have shown that large eruptions of material correspond to a sixfold decrease in the brightness of the star. Now the star can only be seen through telescopes.
Hypergiant loses 100 times more mass than Betelgeuse. Some nodes have more than twice the mass of Jupiter. The star began life as a bright blue supergiant star, the mass of which was 35-40 times the mass of the Sun. A few million years later, when the rate of burning of thermonuclear hydrogen changed, the star turned into a red supergiant. According to scientists, it can avoid the supernova stage and immediately collapse into a black hole.