Conny Aerts

It's a supergiant, right?

It's a very big star.

And so these stars are nearing the end of their life.

And so they're puffing up their material and they're blowing it away, so to speak, right?

And so when material gets lost from the star, well, then for us, the star is obscured because it's in between the supergiant and us.

There's material that is being expelled, right?

Now, for me, as an astrosismologist, that's a bit annoying, that behavior, because Betelgeuse has starquakes, but all that material that's being expelled makes it hard to still measure them.

It's blocking the view.

And that's also the reason why, for us, it's difficult to do astrosismology from ground-based telescopes.

The stars are up there.

People say they twinkle, right?

But that twinkling that you see with your eyes, that's not the star.

That's actually the starlight that is being perturbed by the Earth's atmosphere.

And so it's a bit similar.

But then the twinkling of Betelgeuse is caused by the material it has expelled.

But it does have also oscillations.

And these oscillations can tell us how old it is.

and how big it is, et cetera.

It's going to happen.

It's not bad.