Rigel
(31.5” L x 11” W x 28” H)
The StarSentient™ sculpture, Rigel, is named for the brilliant blue-white star marking the Orion constellation’s left foot and is one of the most intrinsically luminous stars visible from Earth. A blue supergiant, Rigel, is about 70–80 times our Sun’s size and approximately 860 light-years away. It radiates 61,000 to 363,000 times our Sun’s total energy output. Although much smaller than supergiant Betelgeuse in the same constellation, Rigel burns far hotter, allowing it to exceed its red counterpart in total luminosity, with a high percentage of this energy emitted in 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.
Through this sculpture, the essence of Rigel’s stellar grandeur and blue-white brilliance is conveyed, with a compositional blend of high-clarity deep blue glass, opalene white, and light blue elements, and fiber-optic spheres.
