Rapid rising of Betelgeuse's luminosity
ATel #13601; Costantino Sigismondi (ICRA/Sapienza University of Rome and ITIS G. Ferraris, Rome)
on 31 Mar 2020; 22:38 UT
Credential Certification: Costantino Sigismondi (sigismondi@icra.it)
Subjects: Optical, Request for Observations, A Comment, Star, Variables
Betelgeuse is rapidly recovering luminosity at an average rate of 0.02 magnitudes per day in the last week of March 2020. This rate is comparable with the rapid decay of the 2019-2020 dimming when Betelgeuse reached the visual magnitude of 1.45 around February 11, 2020 (see Guinan et al. 2020, ATel #13512 for many more details and V photometry) and it is larger than the average rates seen in the previous 8 years. If this will remain the maximum rate of increasing luminosity, it is reliable to expect Betelgeuse reaching a maximum visual magnitude of 0.4 at the end the present rising phase. Further observations and photometry in this phase can be useful to better determine the maximum increasing luminosity rate. On March 31st 2020 20:18 UT the visual magnitude reached 0.93, approaching Aldebaran. On March 23rd 2020 Betelgeuse surpassed Pollux with 1.08 at 19:43 UT. All visual magnitudes are corrected for the airmass of Rome, Italy, and are published in the AAVSO database (https://www.aavso.org/lcg ) under SGQ code since December 2011 with more than 650 datapoints and errorbars down to 0.01 magnitudes (see also C. Sigismondi, Betelgeuse at the end of 2019: an historical minimum about to end https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.12539 and Betelgeuse Dimming international Workshop of 17 January 2020 held at ICRANet seat in Pescara.
Betelgeuse Dimming International Workshop
