Betelgeuse

[Orange Pickle]

Your heading says Betelgeuse is 25 % closer than previously thought. Using your numbers 650 and 530 light years , that percent should be closer by 18.46 %

[grant hutchison]

You're referring to this Universe Today article?
I think the number comes from these two sentences:
"A recent 2017 study came up with 724 light-years (+111/-156)"
"They used three separate models to interpret that data, and they arrived at a distance measurement of 548 (+88/-49) light-years away".

Given the confidence ranges for both measurements, that's indistinguishable from "25% closer".

Grant Hutchison