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If you could catch the hot gas that the star Alnilam is blowing into space, in a million years you\\u2019d have enough to make two stars as heavy as the Sun. But you wouldn\\u2019t be able to tell much difference in Alnilam itself, because it\\u2019s one of the monsters of the Milky Way.

Alnilam is the \\u201cbuckle\\u201d in Orion\\u2019s Belt, a compact line of three bright stars. It rolls across the south on winter nights.

It\\u2019s the most impressive member of the belt. As seen from Earth, it\\u2019s the brightest of the three stars, even though it\\u2019s hundreds of light-years farther away. And while each of the others consists of more than one star, Alnilam moves through the galaxy alone.

Alnilam is a supergiant. It\\u2019s more than 60 times as massive as the Sun, tens of thousands of degrees hotter, and hundreds of thousands of times brighter. Its radiation is so intense, that it blows a dense \\u201cwind\\u201d of hot gas from its surface. The wind races into space at millions of miles an hour.

Although Alnilam is only a few million years old, it\\u2019s nearing the end of its life. It\\u2019s probably consumed its original hydrogen fuel. Over the next few million years, it\\u2019ll burn through a series of heavier elements forged in its core.

Eventually, though, it won\\u2019t be able to sustain that process any longer. Its core will collapse, while its outer layers blast into space as a supernova \\u2014 briefly outshining the combined light of most of the other stars in the galaxy.
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Script by Damond Benningfield

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