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From: dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd)
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: StarDate: January 27 Rigel
Message-ID: <963@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 27-Jan-85 02:00:24 EST
Article-I.D.: utastro.963
Posted: Sun Jan 27 02:00:24 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 30-Jan-85 19:13:42 EST
Organization: UTexas Astronomy Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 36


Rigel is a huge blazing white-hot star -- visible each evening now in
the southern sky.  More -- after this.

January 27  Rigel

Stars are born with different quantities of mass -- and the most
massive stars are those destined to live the shortest lives.

An example of a young massive star is Rigel in the constellation
Orion.  This constellation is easy to pick out because the belt of
Orion makes a short straight row of three stars -- unlike anything else
in the sky.

Rigel isn't one of the three stars in the belt.  But it's very
noticeable as a bright blue-white star located below Orion's belt --
now high in the south each evening.  Rigel is the 7th brightest star in
our sky -- and it's located as far away as 900 light-years.  That means
the star must really be large and very hot -- Rigel is some 50 times
greater in diameter than our sun -- and it's nearly 60 thousand times
as bright!

Rigel is the brightest member of the Orion Association -- a group of
blazing hot stars in that region of the galaxy -- at whose heart lies
the famous Orion Nebula -- a vast cloud in space from which new stars
even now are being born.  We know Rigel is a relatively young star -- a
star recently emerged from its cocoon of gas and dust -- because stars
like Rigel don't last very long.  Rigel was born very massive -- and
the most massive stars burn themselves out at the fastest rate --
meaning that such stars may survive only a few million years instead of
the billions of years characteristic of stars like our sun.


Script by Deborah Byrd.

(c) Copyright 1984, 1985 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin