01
Facts
Facts about Rigel
Rigel is the brightest star in the constellation Orion. It is also the 7th brightest star. Its temperature is 11,000 k, about 2 times the temperature of our Sun. It is 75 times the size of the sun and is 864.3 light years away from the Earth. A lot of Rigel's energy is emitted as Ultraviolet radiation. It is a Blue supergiant with a whitish-bluish color, which tells us that it is really hot. It is 8.005 million years old.
02
Background
Background info on Rigel
Rigel, like most stars, was created by gases coming together due to gravity. This forms a nebula, a cloud of gas pulled together due to gravity. Eventually, the gases get too hot and create a protostar. Once the protostar gets hot, it starts to form the star. If the star has sufficient mass(which Rigel does have) it will start fusion, the act of nuclei combining to form heavier elements. It goes from hydrogen into helium, and helium into carbon and so on...Until it forms Iron. When a star forms Iron it it's core it becomes unstable and explodes(Supernova). The star creates the other elements in the periodic table in it's supernova. The average lifespan of a star is about 10 billion years. Rigel, however, is already dying at the age of 8 million years due to its mass and type of star.
03
Death
Information on Rigel's death
Rigel is really close to its supernova. According to the top 10 supernova candidates list, Rigel is the seventh most likely for a supernova. Rigel has already burned out its hydrogen fuel and is now burning other fuels to survive. Eventually, Rigel will form an iron core, which stars cannot support as iron is resistant to fusion. Rigel will then explode forming a supernova that will light up the sky. After that the core will shrink into either a neutron star, a star with a lot of density and high amounts of gravity or a black hole, a hole in which gravity is so high, even light cannot escape it. This is determined by the stars solar mass. Rigel is scheduled to be a black hole due to its mass, size, brightness and type of star.