Related papers: Does Betelgeuse have a magnetic field?
Betelgeuse is an example of a cool super-giant displaying brightness fluctuations and irregular surface structures. Simulations by Freytag et al. (2002) of the convective envelope of the star have shown that the fluctuations in the star's…
Betelgeuse is an M supergiant with a complex and extended atmosphere, which also harbors spots and giant granules at its surface. A possible magnetic field could contribute to the mass loss and to the heating of the outer atmosphere. We…
Evidence is presented from numerical magneto-hydrodynamical simulations for the existence of magnetic activity in late-type giant stars. A red supergiant with stellar parameters similar to that of Betelgeuse (alpha Orionis) is modeled as a…
The behavior of the bright red supergiant, Betelgeuse, is described with results principally from the past 6 years. The review includes imaging, photometry, and spectroscopy to record the Great Dimming of 2019--2020. This event was followed…
Betelgeuse has fascinated people since they first looked at the sky. Here we present a contemporary summary of the observations and theory that lead to our understanding of Betelgeuse as a massive red supergiant doomed to collapse and…
Convectively driven dynamos with rotation generating magnetic fields on scales large compared with the scale of the turbulent eddies are being reviewed. It is argued that such fields can be understood as the result of an alpha effect.…
Betelgeuse is an M-type supergiant that presents a circularly polarized (Stokes V) signal in its line profiles, interpreted in terms of a surface magnetic field. The weak circular polarization signal has been monitored over 7.5 years in…
Natural dynamos such as planets and stars generate global scale magnetic field despite the inferred presence of small scale turbulence. Such systems are known as large scale dynamos and are typically driven by convection and influenced by…
Recent numerical MHD simulations suggest that magnetic activity may occur in late-type giants. A entire red supergiant with stellar parameters equal to Betelgeuse was modelled in 3d with the high-order "Pencil Code". Linear kinematic and…
Context. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant (RSG) that is known to vary semi-regularly on both short and long timescales. The origin of the short period of Betelgeuse has often been associated to radial pulsations but could also be due to the…
The evolved stages of massive stars are poorly understood, but invaluable constraints can be derived from spatially resolved observations of nearby red supergiants, such as Betelgeuse. Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)…
We present the outcome of a highly-sensitive search for magnetic fields on the cool supergiant Betelgeuse. A time-series of six circularly-polarized spectra was obtained using the NARVAL spectropolarimeter at T\'elescope Bernard Lyot (Pic…
All cool main sequence stars including our Sun are thought to have magnetic fields. Observations of the Sun revealed that even in quiet regions small-scale turbulent magnetic fields are present. Simulations further showed that such magnetic…
Stellar dynamos are driven by complex couplings between rotation and turbulent convection, which drive global-scale flows and build and rebuild stellar magnetic fields. When stars like our sun are young, they rotate much more rapidly than…
The recent pre-print by Saio et al. 2023 argues that the supergiant Betelgeuse is already undergoing carbon burning, based on the assumption that all of its light variations are caused by radial pulsations. However, the angular diameter…
Spiral galaxies, including the Milky Way, have large-scale magnetic fields with significant energy densities. The dominant theory attributes these magnetic fields to a large-scale dynamo. We review the current status of dynamo theory and…
The dynamo mechanism, responsible for the solar magnetic activity, is still an open problem in astrophysics. Different theories proposed to explain such phenomena have failed in reproducing the observational properties of the solar…
Despite being the best studied red supergiant star in our Galaxy, the physics behind the photometric variability and mass loss of Betelgeuse is poorly understood. Moreover, recently the star has experienced an unusual fading with its visual…
Betelgeuse is the nearest red supergiant, one of the brightest stars in our sky, and statistically speaking it would be expected to be "typical". Yet it exhibits many features that seem "curious", to say the least. For instance it has a…
An update is given on the current status of solar and stellar dynamos. At present, it is still unclear why stellar cycle frequencies increase with rotation frequency in such a way that their ratio increases with stellar activity. The…