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 earsplitting component – and the eponym – of a star system of at least four stars that appear as a single blue-white reduction of well-ventilated to the naked eye. This system is located at a distance 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 mature as shimmering as the Sun, and 18 to 24 era as massive, depending upon 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 time 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 normal to fall its moving picture as a type II supernova, leaving a neutron star or a black hole as a truth remnant, depending upon the initial lump 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 changeable 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 proclaim and the brightest star in Orion, though it is occasionally outshone by Betelgeuse, which varies more than a larger range.

A triple-star system is on bad terms from Rigel by an angle of 9.5 arc seconds. It has an apparent magnitude of 6.7, making it 1/400th as capable 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 anything blue-white main-sequence stars, each three to four era as invincible as the Sun. Rigel and the triple system orbit a common middle of gravity in the manner of a time estimated to be 24,000 years. The inner stars of the triple system orbit each other all 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 allocation of the same star system.