EDP Sciences, EAS Publications Series, (60), p. 167-172
DOI: 10.1051/eas/1360019
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Betelgeuse Workshop, November 2012, Paris. To be published in the European Astronomical Society Publications Series, 2013, Editors: Pierre Kervella, Thibaut Le Bertre & Guy Perrin ; International audience ; We present the results of the analysis of our recent interferometric observations of Betelgeuse, using the AMBER instrument of the VLTI. Using the medium spectral resolution mode ($R ∼ 1500$) we detected the presence of the water vapour and carbon monoxide (CO) molecules in the H and K bands. We also derived the photospheric angular diameter in the continuum. By analysing the depth of the molecular lines and the interferometric visibilities, we derived the column densities of the molecules, as well as the temperature and the size of the corresponding regions in the atmosphere of Betelgeuse (the MOLsphere) using a single shell model around the photosphere. Our results confirm the findings by Perrin \etal\ (\cite{Perrin2004}) and Ohnaka \etal\ (\cite{Ohnaka2011}) that the H$_2$O and CO molecules are distributed around Betelgeuse in a MOLsphere extending to approximately 1.3 times the star's photospheric radius.