This affirms a separate, earlier study<\/a> that predicted Betelbuddy\u2019s striking youth compared to Betelgeuse, a red supergiant nearing the end of its stellar lifespan. At the same time, the findings usurp several assumptions astronomers have made about the nature of Betelbuddy\u2019s stellar composition.<\/p>\n Hold on, Betelbuddy! <\/p>\n The project was a \u201crace against time,\u201d the researchers describe in a statement<\/a>, as it managed to catch Betelbuddy in the nick of time before it disappeared behind its companion for the next two years.<\/p>\n The Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii captured a faint image of Betelbuddy, which in itself was a miraculous feat, as the \u201cbrightness difference between Betelgeuse and this little companion is absolutely insane,\u201d explained Anna O\u2019Grady, study lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, in the statement.<\/p>\n To put this into perspective, Betelgeuse is about 700 times the size of our Sun and thousands of times brighter. So, the team considered other methods for probing the tiny star: X-ray imaging and UV spectroscopy. That Chandra and Hubble accepted their proposals to view the same event testifies to the astrophysical community\u2019s excitement about Betelbuddy, the researcher said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt turns out that there had never been a good observation where Betelbuddy wasn\u2019t behind Betelgeuse,\u201d O\u2019Grady said. \u201cThe fact that we can now confirm something is there shows how far our science has come.\u201d<\/p>\n An odd stellar pair <\/p>\n Once the data supported Betelbuddy\u2019s existence, astronomers began to consider what kind of star it could have been. The most \u201cstandard\u201d explanation would be that, given its small size and Betelgeuse\u2019s age, Betelbuddy was a compact neutron star or white dwarf.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd those are very, very different objects,\u201d O\u2019Grady said. \u201cIf it was one of those objects, it would point to a very different evolutionary history for the system.\u201d<\/p>\n As the universe would have it, Betelbuddy was neither, she added. The little companion showed no evidence of accretion, a \u201challmark\u201d of neutron stars or white dwarfs. The X-ray data strongly favors Betelbuddy as a young stellar object. As of now, it is difficult to \u201cplace strong constraints on its mass,\u201d the paper noted, although the new findings are still consistent with the mass range predicted by the team that directly imaged<\/a> Betelbuddy in July.<\/p>\n The bottom line is that Betelbuddy is a lot smaller than Betelgeuse. This strongly challenges the conventional idea that binary star pairs generally resemble each other in mass. If the observations hold, Betelgeuse is somewhere between 15 and 18 times the mass of Betelbuddy\u2014a \u201cstaggering\u201d ratio, the researchers said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis opens up a new regime of extreme mass ratio binaries,\u201d O\u2019Grady added, meaning it signals the presence of an entirely new class of binary stars with wildly disparate masses. \u201cIt\u2019s an area that hasn\u2019t been explored much because it\u2019s so difficult to find them or to even identify them like we were able to do with Betelgeuse.\u201d<\/p>\n As the researchers say, Betelbuddy won\u2019t likely appear within detection range for another two years. But when the little star makes its comeback in November 2027, astronomers will be ready to learn more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A couple months back, astronomers officially confirmed the existence of \u201cBetelbuddy,\u201d Betelgeuse\u2019s long-suspected companion star. Since then, researchers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[399,72720,9248,34579,111,139,69,147,392,1187],"class_list":{"0":"post-99036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-astrophysics","9":"tag-binary-stars","10":"tag-chandra","11":"tag-hubble-telescope","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-space","17":"tag-stellar-evolution"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Betelgeuse](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/betelgeuse-companion-star-1280x800.jpg\")
Betelgeuse and Betelbuddy. Credit: International Gemini Observatory\/NOIRLab\/NSF\/AURA\/M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) <\/p>\n