Rigel
(31.5” L x 11” W x 28” H)
Through this StarSentient® sculpture, Rigel, the essence of the star of the same name’s unique, stellar grandeur and brilliance is conveyed, with a compositional blend of high-clarity, deep transparent blue glass, opalene white with light blue casing, with four royal blue, fiber-optic spheres.
The brilliant blue-white supergiant star marking the Orion constellation’s lower right foot and is one of the most intrinsically luminous stars visible from Earth. Rigel is about 70–80 times our Sun’s size and approximately 860 light-years away. It radiates up to 363,000 times our Sun’s total energy output. Although much smaller than the supergiant Betelgeuse diagonally opposite at the constellation’s upper left corner (shoulder), Rigel burns far hotter, allowing it to exceed its red counterpart in total luminosity, with a high percentage of this energy emitted within the ultraviolet spectrum. The name Rigel derives from the Arabic Rijl al-Jawzāʾ, meaning “the foot of the mighty one.” With an estimated age of 7 to 9 million years, Rigel has already exhausted its core hydrogen fuel, expanded, and cooled to become a supergiant. Tied to a triple-star, blue giant system orbiting very close by to it, Rigel is another short-lived giant, destined to end its life as a supernova, dispersing its elements out into interstellar space with the remnant being a black hole, or a neutron star.
