Happy Wednesday everyone! For Week 54 we will be revisiting the Orion constellation again, but this time we’ll be finding a different star: Rigel!
Rigel is the brightest star in Orion. It is a blue supergiant star that is 47,000 times more luminous than our Sun and nearly 80 times bigger than it. Check out this video to see these comparisons and more.
To find Rigel tonight, go outside and look directly up just like last week. Instead of the star at the top-left of Orion (Betelgeuse), we’ll be looking for the blue-ish/white-ish star at the bottom-right of the constellation. That’s Rigel!
Did you know Rigel is actually part of a multiple system with at least four other stars? It’s also one of the nearest stars to us that will eventually go supernova. When this happens, it will be nearly as bright as the quarter Moon!
To learn more about Rigel check out this link from star-facts.com and this article from skyandtelescope.org.
Happy stargazing!