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 massive 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 set against of nearly 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 times as lustrous as the Sun, and 18 to 24 period as massive, depending on the method and assumptions used. Its radius is more 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 era 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 end its animatronics as a type II supernova, leaving a neutron star or a black hole as a definite remnant, depending upon 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 regulating due to the amplitude and periodicity of its brightness variation, as without difficulty 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 ventilate and the brightest star in Orion, though it is occasionally outshone by Betelgeuse, which varies beyond 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 clever 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 everything blue-white main-sequence stars, each three to four times as terrible as the Sun. Rigel and the triple system orbit a common middle of gravity subsequently a epoch 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 every 63 years. A much fainter star, separated from Rigel and the others by nearly an arc minute, may be ration of the same star system.