Standing upright and shining
down upon us through the frosty air, high in our southern sky at around 8 p.m.
is the brightest and grandest of all the constellations, Orion, the Mighty Hunter.
Three bright stars in line
in the middle of a bright rectangle decorate Orion's belt, which points northward
to the star clusters of the Hyades and Pleiades of Taurus, and southward to
the Dog Star Sirius [discussed
last week]. It is here that we also find two immense stars, Rigel and Betelgeuse.
Rigel (the "Left Leg
of the Giant"), is a blue-white supergiant star, one of the rarest breeds
in our galaxy. But with their enormous brilliance - up to 100,000 times that
of the Sun - these stars remain conspicuous over great distances.
In contrast, red supergiants
like Betelgeuse ("The Armpit of the Giant") are gigantic bloated globes
of cooler gas. If such a star were to replace the Sun in the solar system, it
might extend beyond Mars' orbit.
Rigel is one of the most
intrinsically luminous of all stars and one of the hottest, apparently just
reaching the prime of its life in the time span of a star. It has been computed
that Rigel's luminosity is something like 57,000 times that of the Sun. It's
773 light-years away. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year,
about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
In stark contrast, bright
red Betelegeuse is near the end of its career. It is some 522 light-years away
and no longer shines with a steady light. It is a "pulsating" star,
expanding and contracting spasmodically with a diameter that varies from 550
to 920 times that of the Sun, but so irregular are these pulsations that no
one can predict exactly when it will expand or contract.
In trying to describe Betelegeuse
many years ago, a lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium once noted that
it is "like an old man with his strength almost entirely spent, panting
in the asthmatic decrepitude of old age."
Stars produce their energy
by fusing hydrogen into helium deep within their cores. When a star accumulates
sufficient helium in its core, its energy output increases significantly, and
it swells into a red giant or supergiant, like Betelgeuse. This is what Rigel
will become in a few million years.
In such stars, the core
produces successively heavier elements to balance the incessant crush of gravity.
But once the core begins creating iron, a star's days are numbered; the formation
of elements heavier than iron consumes rather than produces energy. Eventually,
since the core can no longer support the star's vast weight, it collapses, triggering
a cataclysmic supernova explosion.
Betelgeuse is in its final
stage and could explode in only a few million years.
One of the pleasures of
stargazing is noticing and enjoying the various colors that stars display in
dark skies. These hues offer direct visual evidence of how stellar temperatures
vary. Ruddy Betegeuse and bluish Rigel provide an excellent color contrast but
we can easily find other colors as well.
Look at orangish Aldebaran
and yellowish Pollux. And considerably removed from the winter groupings, is
brilliant topaz Arcturus, usually regarded as a spring star, but now, in the
dead of midwinter, rises this week between 9 and 9:30 p.m. and quickly holds
forth in solitary splendor in the east-northeast.
Even as you observe these
stellar colors, do you notice that they're recognizable only for the brightest
stars? This is due to the physiology of the eye, more specifically, the fact
that the color sensors on the retina - the cones - are insensitive to faint
light. Under dim illumination the retinal rods take over. But their greater
light sensitivity is offset by their color blindness. This is why we see all
faint stars as white. However, if we look at them through binoculars or a telescope,
their amplified brightness stimulates the cones, which detect their color.
Basic Sky Guides
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Joe Rao
serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium.
He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and
he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News
12 Westchester, New York.
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