Most detailed image of a Star

Orion is the Beyonce of constellations. Pretty much everyone has heard of it and
seen it (you can even see it in New York despite the light pollution). Its hard not
to like it. And if you spend some time studying its behavior and meaning, youll
only appreciate its intricacies even more.

So theres good reason to be excited about this new image of Orions second
brightest and biggest star, Betelgeuse, taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter
Array in Northern Chile. Not only is it one of the crispest images of a stellar
surface yet, but it can tell scientists a lot about the massive stars future.

This is a big star that will go supernova one day, paper author and astronomer
Iain McDonald from the University of Manchester told Gizmodo. But we dont
know when, we dont know how, and dont know how much material it will lose
before it does.

Betelgeuse is a red giant star, but giant is sort of an understatementits radius

is 1200 times that of our Sun, equalling more than the distance from the sun to
Jupiter. But its losing mass, and scientists want to know why, and how that
mass loss will impact the stars ultimate demise. So they took this image of its
microwave emissions on November 9, 2015 using ALMAs array of satellite
dishes.