February's Star

This month look for the star, Rigel, the bright white star in the lower right corner of the constellation of Orion the Hunter. Rigel’s name comes from the Arabic, ar-Rijl, which means “the foot”. Astronomers know Rigel as Beta Orionis, indicating that it is the second brightest star in Orion. Actually though, Betelgeuse, the red-orange star in Orion is slightly fainter than Rigel, making Rigel the brightest star in Orion. Overall, Rigel is the 7th brightest star in our skies. It’s a blue supergiant star, 17 times more massive than our Sun, 70 times larger, and 40,000 times brighter. At a distance of 777 light years, the light that you see tonight left Rigel in 1237.

Orion is due south at 9:30 PM in the beginning of February, making it well placed for observing. While looking for Rigel, take a moment to look at the middle star in Orion’s sword. This is the famous Orion Nebula, a great stellar nursery. Here, hundreds of stars are being born within a swirling cloud of dust and gas. Images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope show that many of these stars are surrounded in a disk of dust and gas. Perhaps in some 4 billion years, an intelligence on a planet around one of these stars will look up their night sky and wonder about the possibility of life around the stars visible in the night sky. By then, unfortunately, our Sun will be a white dwarf star and slowly cooling down after having incinerated some of its planets, possibility even one called Earth.