Betelgeuse

Forums General Discussion Betelgeuse

Viewing 12 posts - 81 through 92 (of 92 total)
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  • #620701
    Alex Pratt
    Participant

    Hi Ian,

    Here’s a link to using the drift-scan technique for occultation events

    https://www.asteroidoccultation.com/observations/DriftScan/Index.htm

    I’ve no experience of using it, and the Betelgeuse event was gradual.

    All observers who attempted to observe the Betelgeuse occultation are requested to submit a report form and their raw data to the pro-am campaign team in Paris. This is discussed in Josselin Desmars’ presentation
    (PDF in this link)
    https://share.obspm.fr/s/aYzPBYByoEL2xZY

    (video at this link – talk begins at 1hr 51m)
    https://astrotube.obspm.fr/w/isuxhMSJZ5FNNPKeT3AZbb

    Create an account on the Occultation Portal
    https://occultation.tug.tubitak.gov.tr/

    then upload your report file and data (see other methods if files are very large). The Paris team will analyse your data.

    Alex (back in ‘sunny’ Leeds)

    • This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by Alex Pratt.
    #621355
    Jeremy Shears
    Participant

    An MNRAS submission on “Images of Betelgeuse with VLTI/MATISSE across the Great Dimming” appears on ArXiv today: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.12404

    The authors present mid-infrared long-baseline spectro-interferometric measurements of Betelgeuse taken with the VLTI/MATISSE instrument before (Dec. 2018), during (Feb. 2020), and after (Dec. 2020) the Global Dimming Event. This supports the theory that the dimming was due to dust (especially SiO) being blown off by the red supergiant.

    #621375
    Alex Pratt
    Participant

    Thanks Jeremy.

    Miguel Montarges is the lead scientist of the Leona-Betelgeuse pro-am campaign and he has just e-mailed the group to mention that they’ve received over 100 observations, and 75 of the light curves are almost not – or not at all – affected by clouds. Recordings were obtained using various filters, so they should be able to measure Betelgeuse’s diameter at a range of wavelengths.

    As a very provisional example, Dave Herald measured a light curve obtained in Ha by Alfonso Noschese, and after applying a large limb darkening coefficient it gave a diameter of 60 mas.

    https://ukoccultations.groups.io/g/main/message/3036

    The campaign team also hopes that the dataset will detect the huge convection cells in Betelgeuse’s photosphere.

    Cheers,

    Alex.

    #621394
    Jeremy Shears
    Participant

    It will certainly be interesting to see what new insights emerge from analysis of the occultation, Alex!

    #621396
    Alex Pratt
    Participant

    Hi Jeremy,

    Tim and I will post an update whenever any results are made available.

    Cheers,

    Alex.

    #621989
    Jeremy Shears
    Participant

    Costantino Sigismondi reports Betelgeuse is dimming and is now as faint as it has been for two years:
    https://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=16501

    whilst nothing like as faint as it got during the great dimming of a few years ago, it’s worth keeping an eye on as Orion dips towards the west.

    #623553
    Alex Pratt
    Participant

    A paper on ‘Single-photon gig in Betelgeuse’s occultation’ is available on ArXiv

    https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2406.14704

    (Thanks to Oliver Klös IOTA/ES for bringing this to our attention)

    The authors describe recording the 2023 Dec 12 Leona-Betelgeuse occultation using a Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) array, and they give their measures of the light drop and Betelgeuse’s angular diameter in the SDSS g-band.

    (We await the paper(s) from the Leona-Betelgeuse pro-am campaign).

    Alex.

    #623554
    Robin Leadbeater
    Participant

    Fascinating technology that SPAD array. I don’t understand though why the SNR for the SPAD array shown in fig 4 is so much lower than for the CMOS camera. They say it is 50x lower and attribute it to the low 3.5% fill factor but by my calculation, that alone should only give an ~5x reduction of SNR, not 50x ie sqrt(1/0.035)

    Cheers
    Robin

    #623555
    Alex Pratt
    Participant

    Hi Robin,

    The lead author gives their e-mail address, so you could contact them for clarification.

    Fig. 4 shows interesting disparities in the ‘g’ and ‘r’ light curves during the ingress phase. These are the kind of features that the Leona-Betelgeuse analysts will be investigating.

    Cheers,

    Alex.

    #623558
    Robin Leadbeater
    Participant

    Hi Alex,

    The lead author gives their e-mail address, so you could contact them for clarification.

    Yes I have done. We’ll see what comes back. Fig 4 has error bars which are clearly nowhere near 50x wider for the SPAD data which if the 50 fold figure is correct, implies the uncertainty is determined by factors other than the SNR. At 50ms sample rate I would expect scintillation to be a significant factor in the uncertainty, though there seems to be perhaps some interesting correlation in the fine detail between the two measurements during egress which cannot be due to scintillation.

    Cheers
    Robin

    #623561
    Alex Pratt
    Participant

    Hi Robin,

    The paper and SPAD vs CMOS sensor performance are now being discussed on the IOTAoccultations forum

    https://groups.io/g/IOTAoccultations/topic/recent_article_on_use_of/106850984

    Cheers,

    Alex.

    #625130
    Jeremy Shears
    Participant

    A paper submitted to AAS Journals and published on ArXiv today considers whether Betelgeuse might have a tiny companion.
    The paper titled “Radial Velocity and Astrometric Evidence for a Close Companion to Betelgeuse” is at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.11332

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