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Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation Orion is a typical blue-white supergiant; the three stars of Orion's Belt are all blue supergiants; Deneb is the brightest star in Cygnus, another blue supergiant; and Delta Cephei (itself the prototype) and Polaris are Cepheid variables and yellow supergiants.
Another theory associated with hypergiant stars is the potential to form a pseudo-photosphere, that is a spherical optically dense surface that is actually formed by the stellar wind rather than being the true surface of the star. Such a pseudo-photosphere would be significantly cooler than the deeper surface below the outward-moving dense wind.
This is the nearest red giant to the Earth, and the fourth brightest star in the night sky. Pollux (β Geminorum) 9.06 ± 0.03 [96] AD The nearest giant star to the Earth. Spica (α Virginis A) 7.47 ± 0.54 [102] One of the nearest supernova candidates and the sixteenth-brightest star in the night sky. Regulus (α Leonis A) 4.16 × 3.14 [103]
A giant star has a substantially larger radius and luminosity than a main-sequence (or dwarf) star of the same surface temperature. [1] They lie above the main sequence (luminosity class V in the Yerkes spectral classification) on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram and correspond to luminosity classes II and III. [2]
By analogy to the red giant branch for low-mass stars, this region is also called the blue giant branch. [2] They are larger than the Sun but smaller than a red supergiant , with surface temperatures of 10,000–50,000 K and luminosities from about 10,000 to a million times that of the Sun.
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The term applies to a variety of stars in different phases of development, all evolved stars that have moved from the main sequence but have little else in common, so blue giant simply refers to stars in a particular region of the HR diagram rather than a specific type of star. They are much rarer than red giants, because they only develop from ...
Rigel is generally the seventh-brightest star in the night sky and the brightest star in Orion, though it is occasionally outshone by Betelgeuse, which varies over a larger range. A triple-star system is separated from Rigel by an angle of 9.5 arc seconds. It has an apparent magnitude of 6.7, making it 1/400th as bright as Rigel.