49. Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse is the tenth brightest star in the night sky and, after Rigel, the second-brightest in the constellation of Orion. It is located approximately 548 light-years away, and is 726 times larger, than our sun.

Betelgeuse appears as an orangey red star when viewed through a telescope or with the naked eye. The star has been brightening and dimming over the course of around 400 Earth days. But on February 2020 it dimmed rapidly to a record minimum. Images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show that this is from the cause of a huge stellar cloud from some of the star's atmosphere being stripped off. Betelgeuse is classified as a semi-regular star, meaning some of it's changes in brightness are noticeable and some are not.

On 13 December 1920, Betelgeuse was the first star outside the Solar System to have its diameter measured. it's diameter is around 1.2 billion kilometers, which is almost 700 times that of the sun. it's radius (the distance between the core and the surface of a sphere) is around 617 million km and Betelgeuse's circumference is around 3,769,911,1842 km.

Many believe that Betelgeuse, before it was a red supergiant, was an O-type main sequence star. Betelgeuse will explode anytime in the next 100,000 years, which will be witnessed from Earth as a faint glow in the night sky.

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Henry