It Took a Century, but Astronomers Imaged Betelgeuse's Companion

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Most of us are familiar with Betelgeuse (also known as alpha Orionis), the bright shoulder star in the constellation Orion.

It's a red supergiant star that lies somewhere between 400 and 550 light-years away from us and is quite bright.

Betelgeuse contains about 14 times the mass of the Sun and is a fairly young star compared to ours.

It appears to be no more than 10 million years old, which means that it evolved rapidly from a protostar to the red giant we see today.

That lifecycle means Betelgeuse will explode as a supernova sometime in the relatively near future — say within the next 100,000 years.