NASA’s Chandra and Hubble capture first companion star orbiting Betelgeuse

Astronomers have finally verified the existence of a companion star around the red supergiant Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars which are visible to the naked eye in the sky. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope to image the faint companion at its most distant from the supergiant. This is a historic first exploration, where the discovery of a companion orbiting such a large, evolved star more than 700 times bigger and thousands of times brighter than the Sun.

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