Episode 1242
Rigel
Mon, 2020-Sep-28 00:47 UTC
Length - 3:44
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Monday, 28 September 2020 is Rigel.
Rigel, designated β Orionis (Latinized to Beta Orionis, abbreviated Beta Ori, β Ori), is a blue supergiant star in the constellation of Orion, approximately 860 light-years (260 pc) from Earth. 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 point of light to the naked eye. A
star of spectral type B8Ia, Rigel is calculated to be anywhere from 61,500 to 363,000 times as luminous as 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. Rigel's mass-loss due to its stellar wind 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 will end its life as a type II supernova.
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 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 resolved 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.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:47 UTC on Monday, 28 September 2020.
For the full current version of the article, see Rigel on Wikipedia.
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This has been Brian Neural. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day.
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