Sunday 2 August 2020

Orion in Inverness


We found this office with the lovely gate in Inverness. The star in the bottom right hand corner is called Rigel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigel It is a big star with a high temperature and a large luminosity. The article says that it has a radius over 70 times that of the Sun and the surface temperature is 12100K. The surface temperature of the Sun is 5778K. Using Stefan's Law that says power output (luminosity) = sigma*A*T^4 where sigma is a constant and A is the surface area, it means that Rigel is  ((70^2)*(12100^4))/((1^2)*(5778^4)) = 94238 times brighter than the Sun which is within the range quoted in the article.