For more than a hundred years, one of the night sky's most famous stars kept a secret. Now astronomers say they've finally caught it out. Betelgeuse, the reddish, unmistakable star that marks the shoulder of Orion the Hunter, has a companion. A small, hot star has been circling it in tight, fast loops, hidden for generations inside Betelgeuse's glare. On July 28, a European team announced they had captured the sharpest image yet of that companion using the Very Large Telescope in Chile, effectively closing the book on a mystery that dates back to 1908.
