supergiant
Astronomy. supergiant star.
an extremely large or powerful person, company, thing, etc.
extremely large; immense.
Origin of supergiant
1Words Nearby supergiant
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use supergiant in a sentence
It is in orbit with another star, which is itself a massive blue supergiant with a ferocious wind of its own.
Alien Megastructures? Cosmic Thumbprint? Here’s What’s Behind This Spectacular James Webb Image | Peter Tuthill | October 16, 2022 | Singularity HubAstronomers from antiquity through the present day have watched the red supergiant pulsing at the shoulder of the constellation Orion, and the star has continually put on a show, two new studies suggest.
Over time, Betelgeuse changed color. Now it’s also lost its rhythm | Lisa Grossman | August 15, 2022 | Science NewsBetelgeuse is Earth’s closest red supergiant star, a late phase of the stellar life cycle that comes before a supernova explosion.
Dust and a cold spell on Betelgeuse could explain why the giant star dimmed | Lisa Grossman | June 16, 2021 | Science NewsThat could be one way that red supergiants shed material before exploding.
Betelgeuse went dark, but didn’t go supernova. What happened? | Lisa Grossman | November 29, 2020 | Science NewsBetelgeuse is just one of the many aging, massive stars — called red supergiants — that could go supernova at any moment.
Betelgeuse went dark, but didn’t go supernova. What happened? | Lisa Grossman | November 29, 2020 | Science News
British Dictionary definitions for supergiant
/ (ˈsuːpəˌdʒaɪənt) /
any of a class of extremely large and luminous stars, such as Betelgeuse, which have expanded to a large diameter and are eventually likely to explode as supernovae: Compare giant star, white dwarf
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for supergiant
[ sōō′pər-jī′ənt ]
A star that is larger, brighter, and more massive than a giant star, being thousands of times brighter than the Sun and having a relatively short lifespan-only about 10 to 50 million years as opposed to around 5 billion years for the Sun. Supergiants, such as Betelgeuse and Rigel in Orion, are only found in young cosmic structures such as the arms of spiral galaxies. Red supergiants such as Betelgeuse are late-stage stars, having burned most of their hydrogen in an earlier stage as main-sequence stars, and now fuse helium into heavier elements through the triple alpha process. Blue supergiants such as Rigel are thought to have evolved from red giants, though some are considered main-sequence stars. Supergiants are thought to eventually undergo a supernova, ending up as neutron stars or black holes.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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