Betelgeuse, Red Supergiant In Constellation Orion, Has Shrunk By 15 Percent In 15 Years

UC Berkeley physicist Charles Townes, who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for invention of the laser, cleans one of the large mirrors of the Infrared Spatial Interferometer. The ISI is on the top of Mt. Wilson in Southern California. (Credit: Cristina Ryan (2008))

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 16, 2009) — The red supergiant star Betelgeuse, the bright reddish star in the constellation Orion, has steadily shrunk over the past 15 years, according to University of California, Berkeley, researchers.

Long-term monitoring by UC Berkeley's Infrared Spatial Interferometer (ISI) on the top of Mt. Wilson in Southern California shows that Betelgeuse (bet' el juz), which is so big that in our solar system it would reach to the orbit of Jupiter, has shrunk in diameter by more than 15 percent since 1993.

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