Betelgeuse

The constellation Orion has always been special to me.  It was the first constellation I could name by sight, and when I was younger, my mom told me he was watching over me.  Orion's right shoulder (left, when we look at him) is the star Betelgeuse.

Picture of Betelgeuse from the Hubble site taken with the Hubble Space Telescope

Betelgeuse is about 1000 times bigger and 100,000 times more luminous than our sun.  It's one of the brightest stars in the night sky, despite the fact that it's almost 200 parsecs away.  To us, it appears to be slightly red, indicating a low energy and cooler temperature relative to our sun (in astronomy, red means cold and blue means hot).  Because of its color and size, Betelgeuse is classified as a red giant, so it's further along in its life cycle than our sun is by about 3 billion years.  Eventually, because it's so massive, Betelgeuse will most likely explode into a supernova.  

Found on an astronomy wiki page

http://nothingnerdy.wikispaces.com/E5+STELLAR+PROCESSES+AND+STELLAR+EVOLUTION