What is Rigel?
Rigel is the brightest star in the constellation Orion, where it makes up Orion’s “left foot”. (On the right from our perspective.) Rigel is the sixth brightest star in the night sky. Its name derives from the Arabic Riǧl Ǧawza al-Yusra, which was condensed to Rigel. This means “Left Foot of the Central One”. Instead of referring to Orion as “Orion”, the Arabic world called this constellation “the Central One”. Rigel is a bluish-white supergiant star containing 17 solar masses of material, shining with a luminosity 40,000 times greater than our Sun. Being a supergiant, it is approximately 70 solar radii in diameter, or about a third of the distance from the Sun to Earth. Located between 700 and 900 light years from the Earth (astronomers don’t know for sure), Rigel is the brightest star in our local area of the Milky Way. The next brightest star, Deneb, is a full 3,300 light years away. Rigel is closely aligned in the sky with the Orion Nebula, one of the only nebulae visible with the
