Monitoring Betelgeuse at its brightest
ATel #16001; Costantino Sigismondi (ICRA, UPRA and ITIS G. Ferraris, Rome), Wolfgang Vollmann (AAVSO/BAV), Otmar Nickel (University of Mainz, AAVSO/BAV), Alexandre Amorim (NEOA-JBS/AAVSO), Rod Stubbings (AAVSO), Fabio Mariuzza (AAVSO), Paolo Ochner (University of Padova and Osservatorio Astrofisico di Asiago) Remo Ruffini (ICRANet, Pescara)
on 22 Apr 2023; 09:48 UT
Credential Certification: Costantino Sigismondi (sigismondi@icra.it)
Subjects: Optical, Request for Observations, A Comment, Variables
Referred to by ATel #: 16374
Betelgeuse, alpha Orionis, after undergoing the great dimming ATel#13341, ATel#13601, ATel#13982 three years ago at V mag=1.8 has somewhat changed its pace, ATel#15240, showing now six luminosity oscillations in the last thousand days.
A general brightening trend is evident in the last three years, as well.
The star reached a peak of 0.0 visual and 0.1 V-band magnitude in April, 2023.
In these days Betelgeuse come back to its primacy in Orion's constellation, having alpha Orionis as denomination, even if it is normally dimmer than Rigel, the beta Orionis.
Probably its luminosity in 1603 reached mag 0.0 when Johannes Bayer assigned the Greek letters to the stars of Orion.
The 0.0 visual magnitude has been reached by Betelgeuse already 4 times in the last century.
A reflected light by dust clouds around the star, ejected by the star in phase
with the luminosity maxima, may have increased the general luminosity of Betelgeuse.
Its 2023 season of evening visibility is nearly end, leaving still the opportunity to make twilight visual or daytime V-band photometry.
In the attached link a continuous lightcurve of Betelgeuse in V magnitude for the years 2020-2023, and for selected observers the 1900-2023 from AAVSO-BAA database (Mary Orr, Giovanni Battista Lacchini, Reginald Shinkfield, David Rosebrugh, Kenneth Luedeke and the authors of this ATel).
Betelgeuse 1900-2023 selected lightcurves (AAVSO database) and Johannes Bayer Uranometria (1603) Orion's map
