Celebrity star Betelgeuse is smaller and closer to us than we knew - CNET

"We found the second smaller event was likely due to the pulsations of the star," said lead author Meridith Joyce, in a statement from The Australian National University (ANU) on Friday. .

The science team used modeling to sort out what was going with the pulsations, tracing it to what co-author Shing-Chi Leung of the University of Tokyo described as "pressure waves -- essentially, sound waves." This activity helped the researchers figure out where the star is in its life cycle.

Scientists had previously estimated this as the size of Betelgeuse compared with our solar system, but the new study revises that estimate down. .

The upshot is that Betelgeuse isn't in danger of going supernova anytime soon.

The study also shakes up our knowledge of the star's size.

"The actual physical size of Betelgeuse has been a bit of a mystery -- earlier studies suggested it could be bigger than the orbit of Jupiter.