A new spin on Betelgeuse’s boiling surface

Betelgeuse is a famous red supergiant in Orion. It has recently gained much attention—not only due to speculation about an imminent explosion but also because it appears to rotate faster than expected. An international team from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics questions this and proposes that the boiling surface is misinterpreted as rotation. Other astronomers are analyzing new data to test this hypothesis.