Rigel facts for kids
Rigel is a very bright and huge star in our Milky Way Galaxy. It is known as a blue supergiant because of its size and color. You can find Rigel in the constellation Orion, which looks like a hunter in the night sky. Even though it is one of the biggest stars we know, some scientists think it might be one of the youngest. Rigel is much, much bigger than our own star, the Sun. Rigel is about 778 light-years away from Earth. A light-year is how far light travels in one year! On clear nights, you can see Rigel from Earth as a small, bluish-white dot.
What Happens to Rigel?
Rigel shines with a beautiful bluish-white color. This color tells us that Rigel is extremely hot. Hot stars use up their energy much faster than cooler stars, like our yellow Sun.
Just like our Sun, Rigel gets its energy from burning gases like hydrogen and helium in its center. This burning process makes the star shine brightly. Because Rigel is so big and hot, it uses up its fuel very quickly.
When Rigel runs out of hydrogen and helium in its super hot core, it will change. It will grow even larger and turn into a red supergiant. After this, Rigel will explode in a huge blast called a supernova. This explosion will be incredibly bright!
After the supernova, two things might be left behind. It could become a black hole, which is a place in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Or, it could become a pulsar, which is a tiny, super-dense star that spins very fast and sends out beams of radiation.
Images for kids
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Rigel A and Rigel B as they appear in a small telescope
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Rigel and reflection nebula IC 2118 in Eridanus. Rigel B is not visible in the glare of the main star.
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Rigel's place at top-center on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram
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Orion illustrated in a copy of Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi's Book of Fixed Stars. The foot on the left is annotated rijl al-jauza al-yusra, the Arabic name from which Rigel is derived.
See also
In Spanish: Rigel para niños
