Standing on the shoulders of giants: New mass and distance estimates for Betelgeuse through combined evolutionary, asteroseismic, and hydrodynamical simulations with MESA

Understand

We conduct a rigorous examination of the nearby red supergiant Betelgeuse by drawing on the synthesis of new observational data and three different modeling techniques.

• Our observational results include the release of new, processed photometric measurements collected with the space-based SMEI instrument prior to Betelgeuse's recent, unprecedented dimming event.
• We detect the first radial overtone in the photometric data and report a period of $185\pm13.5$ d.
• Our theoretical predictions include self-consistent results from multi-timescale evolutionary, oscillatory, and hydrodynamic simulations conducted with the Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) software suite.