Betelgeuse owes its famous name to a medieval misreading of Arabic
The Arabic name meant the hand of al-Jawzā, the figure we call Orion. Around the thirteenth century a European scribe misread a single dotted letter, turning a y sound into a b, and the error stuck. Today many English speakers say it like Beetlejuice, thanks largely to the 1988 film.
The star behind the mangled name is a red supergiant between 640 and 764 times as wide as the Sun. Placed at the centre of our Solar System, its surface would reach past the asteroid belt, swallowing the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Despite being relatively close, somewhere around 400 to 600 light-years away, its distance is stubbornly uncertain. Younger than 10 million years, it has burned through its fuel fast and is expected to explode as a supernova, probably within the next 100,000 years.
Its brightness has always wandered. John Herschel described the swings in 1836 after watching it outshine neighbouring Rigel in 1837 and 1839, and such variation may explain why Johann Bayer labelled it alpha, the brightest of Orion, in 1603. Aboriginal groups in South Australia have long told stories of its changing light. Colour may have shifted too: Ptolemy called it tawny orange, but Chinese astronomers three centuries earlier recorded it as yellow.
From October 2019 the star dimmed dramatically, losing roughly two thirds of its brightness by February 2020 before recovering by April 2023. Infrared measurements showed its true output had barely changed, and a Hubble study pointed to a surface ejection of gas that cooled into a veil of dust.
Betelgeuse keeps setting records. In 1920 Albert Michelson and Francis Pease fitted an interferometer to the Mount Wilson telescope and made it the first star beyond the Sun whose disc size was measured. In 1995 Hubble captured the first direct telescope image of another star's disc, showing a hot spot perhaps marking a pole. A smaller companion, recognised in September 2025 as Siwarha, meaning her bracelet, probably orbits close by.
Source: Betelgeuse
