Astronomers watch Betelgeuse recover after colossal blast

Betelgeuse's head shrunk like that of Tim Burton's character.

The scientists watched the star blast its outer surface into space, an event they had never seen before. According to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the eruption blew off 400 billion times as much material as the sun does.

The star became so dim that backyard stargazers noticed. Many people wondered if Betelgeuse was on the verge of an explosion.

Experts say that it isn't about to explode. New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope are helping to understand how red stars like Betelgeuse lose mass as they get older. Scientists think that what happened to Betelgeuse might be a different type of phenomenon because of the scale of the blow up.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is observing stellar evolution in real time.

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The material blown off by Betelgeuse has cooled and formed a dust cloud. According to research published in The Astrophysical Journal last week, the haze is what makes the star appear faint from Earth.

The cloud is thought to have obscured the light for a year before it came back to normal brightness.

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Astronomers have measured the star's cycle for over 200 years. It looks like the outer layers may be back to normal, but the inside may be a bit different. Dupree said that it looked like water in the machine.

Credit: Alan Dyer / VW PICS / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

"Betelgeuse is doing some very odd things," Dupree said. The inside is moving.

The star Betelgeuse is located in the right shoulder of the constellation. It has puffed out. If you swapped it out for the sun, it would reach Jupiter, according to scientists. The sun is about 865,000 miles away.

There may be more dimming events for Betelgeuse in three or four years. The new premier observatory operated by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency may be able to spot ejected material in theIR.