Betelgeuse's Companion Star May Be Sculpting Its Increasingly Spotty Atmosphere

Some 640 light-years away, the great red supergiant Betelgeuse — ancient shoulder of Orion — is revealing a face more complicated than astronomers once imagined. Its atmosphere, long assumed to follow the orderly rhythms of internal convection, now displays uneven patches of light and shadow that betray an outside influence: a companion star whose gravitational pull quietly reshapes the giant's outer layers. In studying this celestial partnership, astronomers find not merely a curiosity about one famous star, but a deeper lesson about how companionship — even between suns — leaves its mark on