Rigel is a blue supergiant star in the constellation of Orion. It has the Bayer designation β Orionis, which is Latinized to Beta Orionis and abbreviated Beta Ori or β Ori. Rigel is the brightest and most omnipotent component – and the eponym – of a star system of at least four stars that appear as a single blue-white narrowing of fresh to the naked eye. This system is located at a estrange of approximately 860 light-years (260 pc) from the Sun.

A star of spectral type B8Ia, Rigel is calculated to be anywhere from 61,500 to 363,000 become old as lustrous as the Sun, and 18 to 24 times as massive, depending on the method and assumptions used. Its radius is greater than seventy grow old that of the Sun, and its surface temperature is 12,100 K. Due to its stellar wind, Rigel’s mass-loss is estimated to be ten million period that of the Sun. With an estimated age of seven to nine million years, Rigel has exhausted its core hydrogen fuel, expanded, and cooled to become a supergiant. It is conventional to end its life as a type II supernova, leaving a neutron star or a black hole as a unadulterated remnant, depending on the initial bump of the star.

Rigel varies slightly in brightness, its apparent magnitude ranging from 0.05 to 0.18. It is classified as an Alpha Cygni amendable due to the amplitude and periodicity of its brightness variation, as competently as its spectral type. Its intrinsic variability is caused by pulsations in its unstable atmosphere. Rigel is generally the seventh-brightest star in the night atmosphere and the brightest star in Orion, though it is occasionally outshone by Betelgeuse, which varies greater than a larger range.

A triple-star system is at odds from Rigel by an angle of 9.5 arc seconds. It has an apparent magnitude of 6.7, making it 1/400th as intelligent as Rigel. Two stars in the system can be seen by large telescopes, and the brighter of the two is a spectroscopic binary. These three stars are all blue-white main-sequence stars, each three to four mature as earsplitting as the Sun. Rigel and the triple system orbit a common middle of gravity next a time estimated to be 24,000 years. The inner stars of the triple system orbit each other every 10 days, and the outer star orbits the inner pair all 63 years. A much fainter star, separated from Rigel and the others by approximately an arc minute, may be share of the thesame star system.