Key facts
- Category
- Stars
- Object class
- Blue supergiant star
- Mass
- ~21 solar masses
- Temperature
- ~12,000 K surface
- Scale fact
- 103 million kmdiameter
- Estimated age
- ~8 million years
- Composition
- Hydrogen and helium
Rigel
103 million kmdiameter
Visual creditscaleofspace.org / CC BY-NC 4.0
Details
Rigel is the blue-white supergiant that marks Orion’s foot. Although it looks like a single star to the eye, it is the luminous primary of a multiple-star system.
Rigel is a blue-white supergiant with about 21 times the Sun’s mass and a surface temperature near 12,000 kelvin. Although roughly 860 light-years away, its high luminosity makes it one of the brightest stars in the night sky.
The point visible at Orion’s foot is the primary of a multiple-star system. Its present supergiant phase is brief on stellar timescales because massive stars consume nuclear fuel far faster than stars like the Sun.
Links
- Editorial guides
- Universe journey
- Solar neighborhood
- Preset views
- Wikipedia
- Rigel on Wikipedia
Size neighbors
Objects near Rigel on the scale
On the logarithmic size axis, Rigel falls between Polaris Aa and Deneb. The band uses nearby Stars records.
Shared physical scale
803million km
Sources
References for Rigel
Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, please let us know.
- Rigel — Wikipedia
- Visual: scaleofspace.org / CC BY-NC 4.0
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About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides explain selected parts of that range, while focused views filter the objects by subject.