Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Orion (Ori)  ·  Contains:  19 Ori)  ·  19 bet Ori  ·  Algebar (β Ori  ·  HD33675  ·  HD33735  ·  HD33869  ·  HD33948  ·  HD34084  ·  HD34152  ·  HD34389  ·  Rigel  ·  The star Rigel
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Rigel, Joe Matthews
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Rigel

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Rigel, Joe Matthews
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Rigel

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Description

Again a night that held some promise but alas High clouds rolled in, below average seeing and I just had to image something, so I chose Rigel, Betelgeuse and Caldwell 41.  Rigel was my 1st target I processed using the new Beta Version of Siril.  Rigel is a blue supergiant star in the constellation of Orion. It has the Bayer designationβ Orionis, which is Latinized to Beta Orionis and abbreviated Beta Ori or β Ori. Rigel is the brightest and most massivecomponent – and the eponym – of a star system of at least four stars that appear as a single blue-white point of light 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 times as luminousas the Sun, and 18 to 24 times as massive, depending on the method and assumptions used. Its radius is more than seventy times 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 times 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 expected to end its life as a type IIsupernova, leaving a neutron star or a black hole as a final remnant, depending on the initial mass 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 variable due to the amplitude and periodicity of its brightness variation, as well 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 sky and the brightest star in Orion, though it is occasionally outshone by Betelgeuse, which varies over a larger range.A triple-star system is separated from Rigel by an angle of 9.5 arc seconds. It has an apparent magnitude of 6.7, making it 1/400th as bright 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 times as massive as the Sun. Rigel and the triple system orbit a common center of gravity with a period 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 every 63 years. A much fainter star, separated from Rigel and the others by nearly an arc minute, may be part of the same star system.

@Wikipedia

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Rigel, Joe Matthews