Rigel
Beta Orionis · Orion
Last updated
Position (2026)
♊ 17°12′ Gemini
Magnitude
0.18
Planetary Nature
Jupiter / Saturn (Robson)
Alvidas: Mercury / Mars / Jupiter
Spectral Type
B8Ia
Appearance
A luminous blue-white supergiant on the left foot of Orion, among the most intrinsically bright stars visible to the naked eye
Name Origin
Language
Arabic
Original Form
Rijl Jawza' al-Yusrā
Meaning
Left Foot of the Central One
Beta Orionis. From the Arabic Rijl (foot) of Jawza' (the Central One, Orion). The full name was shortened to Rigel early in Western adoption. Despite its beta designation, it is visually the brightest star in Orion. Allen notes it was important in navigation and widely known across many cultures.
Known As
Rigel stands at Orion's left foot. Its teaching theme draws on Osiris, the ruler whose soul rests in Orion and whose subjects receive his wisdom and protection. Rigel's theme is knowledge made useful through skilled work and education. Inventive ability and lasting honors accompany it in the tradition, while the teacher's satisfaction lies in another person understanding the work. Ambition is part of this star's character. So is impatience when experience becomes a reason to dismiss an objection. Its authority depends on competence, and keeping that authority can become an anxious occupation.
Rigel teaches through work you have done yourself. Robson gives the star inventive or mechanical ability and lasting honors when rising; Brady centers her natal reading on the desire to learn and teach. [1] [5] You have more to offer a student when you demonstrate the work as well as explain it. Experience gives you something specific to pass on, including the mistakes that taught you how to do it well.
There is ambition here too. Robson's honors come with labor and anxiety at the Midheaven, while his Sun description mixes good fortune with a quick temper. [1] Competence earns trust, but occupying a position demands patience with people who know less than you do. The explanation that seemed obvious to you may need another attempt. Being good at the work and helping someone else learn it require different kinds of effort.
A close Rigel conjunction needs the degree for your birth year. The star stands at 17°12′ tropical Gemini in 2026, compared with Robson's 15°43′ Gemini for 1920. [1] It lies about 31° south of the ecliptic, and Augurine's calculator uses a one-degree conjunction orb. A shared zodiac degree therefore links objects well apart in the sky.
Rigel by birth year
On 1 January 2026, Rigel stood at ♊ 17°12′ Gemini in the tropical zodiac.
It has been in Gemini since before the year 1000 and stays there past 2400.
Positions are for 1 January of each year; a star moves about 50 arcseconds a year, so a birth late in the decade sits close to the next row.
| Born in | Position |
|---|---|
| 1900 | ♊ 15°26′ Gemini |
| 1910 | ♊ 15°34′ Gemini |
| 1920 | ♊ 15°43′ Gemini |
| 1930 | ♊ 15°51′ Gemini |
| 1940 | ♊ 16°00′ Gemini |
| 1950 | ♊ 16°08′ Gemini |
| 1960 | ♊ 16°16′ Gemini |
| 1970 | ♊ 16°25′ Gemini |
| 1980 | ♊ 16°33′ Gemini |
| 1990 | ♊ 16°42′ Gemini |
| 2000 | ♊ 16°50′ Gemini |
| 2010 | ♊ 16°58′ Gemini |
| 2020 | ♊ 17°06′ Gemini |
| 2030 | ♊ 17°15′ Gemini |
Rigel rises from every inhabited latitude and never sets poleward of 81.8° S.
Computed by the Augurine engine on the apparent equinox of date from HYG coordinates with proper motion applied (engine build 1c1cc33).
Rigel's honors and the work behind them
Influence. According to Ptolemy and Lilly it is of the nature of Jupiter and Saturn, but later authors consider it favourable and similar to Jupiter and Mars. Alvidas likens it to Mercury, Mars and Jupiter. It gives benevolence, honour, riches, happiness, glory, renown and inventive or mechanical ability.
Ptolemy assigns Jupiter and Saturn to Orion's bright stars apart from the shoulders, and Hephaistio repeats the distinction with the Greek names Zeus and Kronos. Rigel occupies Orion's left foot. [3] [6] [1] With this mixture, you learn the skill before you earn the position. Keeping that position takes work. Robson's alternative Jupiter and Mars account fits the force of his planet descriptions; Jupiter and Saturn fits the labor behind his lasting honors. [1]
The Anonymous of 379 describes that ambition in material terms. Rigel is the bright star at Orion's left toe, identified as Beta Orionis in Robert Hand's roster, within a Jupiter and Saturn group whose rising delineation includes wealth, acquisitions in different cities, agriculture and building. [4] You want to make something that supports a life over time. Property or a business gives that effort a visible form; a skill that earns a reliable income does the same work.
Brady reports Ebertin's account of rapid success followed by a continuing struggle to hold one's position. Her own emphasis is education. [5] When defending your status takes up all your time, further study gives you something to work on beyond the position already reached. Teaching also puts your ability back to work. Someone else needs the explanation you have become tired of giving.
The left foot beside the River
Notes. A double bluish white star situated on the left foot of Orion. From Rijl, the Foot.
Allen gives the longer Arabic derivation as the Left Leg of the Jauzah and dates the appearance of the modern name Rigel to the Alfonsine Tables of 1521. He also records Regel in Riccioli and Riglon in Schickard. [2] The lower limb is unusually persistent in the names. Even the Anonymous of 379 locates the star at the tip of the left toe. [4]
Rigel also stands near the end of Eridanus, the River. Allen notes that older catalogs treated it as common to Orion and Eridanus, and suggests this may explain its maritime character. He also considers the stormy reputation of Orion as a possible reason for that description. [2]
Allen's Norse story changes the figure while keeping the toe. Rigel was a great toe of Orwandil; Thor threw another, frost-bitten toe into the northern sky, where it became Alcor in the Great Bear. [2]
The skill and impatience in Rigel's natal contacts
If rising. Good fortune, preferment, riches, great and lasting honours. If culminating. Great military or ecclesiastical preferment, anger, vexation, magnanimity, much gain acquired by labour and mental anxiety, lasting honours.
With Rigel rising in your natal sky, competence is a basis for earning trust. Robson describes lasting honors, and the Anonymous includes material gains. [1] [4] A longitude conjunction to the Ascendant differs from Rigel actually rising, since the star lies about 31° south of the ecliptic. At the Midheaven, holding the position you sought takes sustained effort. Brady's teacher makes authority depend on what you help others understand. [5] Explain the work well enough that someone else can do it without you.
With Sun. Bold, courageous, insolent, unruly temper, hasty actions, bloodshed, many enemies, great good fortune, military success.
With the Sun, confidence and impatience often arrive together. Robson's violent wording belongs to his period; read boldness and hasty action as tendencies to weigh against the whole chart. You may be ready to take responsibility before you are ready to hear an objection. Notice when you stop answering a colleague's concern and start reminding them of your experience. Leave enough room for someone to improve the proposal.
With Mercury, Robson describes prominence in science or Mercurial matters; his Mars account combines mechanical ingenuity with an unruly disposition. Brady emphasizes learning and teaching. [1] [5] Mercury suits someone who understands a difficult subject well enough to explain it. Mars puts that ingenuity into making or fixing things, with frustration when the work resists. An idea needs testing even when you are certain it is right. Give the test time to finish before changing the design.
With the Moon, Robson stresses worry and disappointment. The Anonymous gives generosity and respect for elders when the Moon looks ahead toward the angular stars in Rigel's group. [1] [4] Brady's Leonardo example also allows for recognition late in life. [5] Waiting for appreciation wears on someone who has put years into learning a subject. Teaching lets you share what you know before public recognition arrives. A student who understands your explanation gives you an immediate response to the work.
Robson's Venus favors honors in middle life and an influential marriage; Jupiter favors advancement through law or religion, travel and foreign affairs. His Saturn description includes help from older people and inheritance. [1] With Venus, a relationship supports the work you want to do. With Jupiter, study or travel enlarges your field of practice. Saturn calls for learning from experienced people, then putting that knowledge to work independently. Accept the help without expecting the person who gave it to make every later decision.
Kepler's Jupiter and Leonardo's late recognition
Rigel can therefore be thought of as the active, educating side of Orion.
Brady develops the educator reading through her account of Orion and Osiris. Her example of Johannes Kepler has Rigel culminating while Jupiter sets, which she connects with his laws of planetary motion. [5] Kepler gives other people a way to understand something for themselves. In a natal chart, this is the satisfaction of working something out carefully enough for somebody else to use. Write the explanation with enough detail for someone to follow the steps without you.
Leonardo da Vinci gives her a different example. Rigel sets while his Moon is at the Nadir, the lower angle. Brady connects this arrangement with acknowledgment late in life or at its end. [5] Doing valuable work and receiving immediate recognition are separate matters. If you recognize yourself in the educator reading, explaining or demonstrating something is available now. Waiting to be recognized as an authority delays work you already know how to do.
Brady also reads Rigel as a heliacal rising star at birth through a need to teach or enlarge other people's worldviews. [5] Her recurring interest is what knowledge does for another person. Find the subject you keep returning to, and consider who could use what you have learned.
Rigel at the feet of Orion and Orwandil
Rigel stands at Orion's left foot. [1] Orion dies from a scorpion's sting after boasting. Diana asks Jove to give him a place in the sky, and Jove sets him among the stars. There Orion can escape in the west whenever his slayer, the Scorpion, rises in the east. [2]
In the Norsemen's astronomy Rigel marked one of the great toes of Orwandil, the other toe having been broken off by the god Thor when frost-bitten, and thrown to the northern sky, where it became the little Alcor of the Greater Bear.
In the Egyptian mythology Allen describes, Osiris's soul comes to rest in Orion and Isis's soul in Sirius. The Book of the Dead identifies Osiris with the constellation Orion. [2]
Osiris teaches the people of the lands he conquers and takes them under his protection. In Brady's account, the birds held beneath his feet are his subjects, who receive his wisdom and protection; this educating ruler gives her the teaching role she reads in Rigel. [5]
How the authors read Rigel
| Source | Nature | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Ptolemy | Jupiter and Saturn | He gives this mixture to Orion's other bright stars after separating out the shoulders. Rigel is at the left foot. [3] [1] |
| Anonymous of 379 | Jupiter and Saturn | The rising toe star shares a group reading concerned with wealth, property, agriculture and building. [4] |
| Hephaistio | Jupiter and Saturn | He assigns Zeus and Kronos to Orion's bright stars apart from its shoulders. [6] |
| Robson | Jupiter and Saturn | He favors material success and inventive ability, and reports Jupiter and Mars as a later alternative. [1] |
| Brady | no planetary mixture given | Her Rigel learns and teaches, with Kepler and Leonardo as examples of knowledge made available to others. [5] |
Natal Conjunctions
Find your conjunctions →Rigel Conjunct Sun
You are ready to take responsibility before the objections have been heard. Robson pairs courage and good fortune with haste and an unruly temper; his violent outcomes belong to his 1923 register and need weighing against the whole chart. The tension lies between readiness to lead and patience with those who question you. Let another person question the plan while there is still time to improve it.
Rigel Conjunct Moon
Work that goes unnoticed tests how much appreciation matters to you. Robson's Moon account stresses worry and disappointment, with severe family and health predictions that require a more measured reading today. Brady reads late acknowledgement in Leonardo's paran, Rigel setting with his Moon at the nadir. The conjunction is worth exploring through the emotional cost of waiting for appreciation, and the satisfaction of sharing what you know before recognition arrives.
Rigel Conjunct Mercury
A difficult subject gives you something to work at and explain. Robson gives scientific interests and prominence through science or Mercurial work, while Brady makes learning and teaching central to Rigel. Together these support a reading of knowledge developed through practice and made intelligible to others. You have taught the skill when the listener can repeat the method independently, with enough understanding to adapt it to a different problem.
Rigel Conjunct Venus
A partner who understands your work gives your ability room to develop. Robson favours honours in middle life and an influential marriage, though his gendered qualification reflects the assumptions of his period. The contact concerns affection alongside professional support. An introduction through a partner may open an opportunity; mutual interest matters as much as what the relationship makes possible at work.
Rigel Conjunct Mars
Making or repairing something can absorb considerable determination. Robson describes mechanical ingenuity alongside an unruly disposition and military advancement. Skill under pressure belongs in this reading, with impatience as the point to watch. You may see a workable solution quickly and resent having to explain it. Test the part that keeps failing before pushing harder, and give collaborators enough detail to work alongside you.
Rigel Conjunct Jupiter
Teaching beyond your own field tests how thoroughly you understand a skill. Robson favours advancement through law or religion, and connects travel and foreign affairs with benefit. Brady's Kepler paran gives that educational reading a specific example. In a conjunction reading, look for opportunities to apply specialised knowledge beyond its original setting. Teaching improves when unfamiliar questions require you to explain your assumptions.
Rigel Conjunct Saturn
A mentor's support gives independent work somewhere to begin. Robson names benefits through elders and through legal or religious figures, alongside inheritance and domestic harmony. This fits the Jupiter and Saturn reading of achievement that takes time. Consider what a mentor has taught you and what inherited resources allow you to attempt. Put that support into a practice you can sustain on your own terms.
Rigel Conjunct Uranus
An old object or a geological question gives independent inquiry a direction. Robson's account concerns antiquities and historical or geological discovery, with unusual friendships abroad and unsettled early relationships. His fatal accident ending is an old prediction to weigh rather than a forecast to repeat. Independent investigation develops through direct encounters here. An absorbing question may lead to friendships with people whose experience changes how you understand the subject.
Rigel Conjunct Neptune
Imagination has a practical outlet in learned or public institutions. Robson describes scholarship and diplomacy, including a position in government or at the head of a learned body. His reserved, resourceful figure suggests someone who can keep an institution functioning while attending to its wider purpose. The working reading concerns discretion in administration, especially where a clear decision has to accommodate people with different interests.
Rigel Conjunct Pluto
After years of teaching a method, you may struggle to let someone else change it. Read this through Rigel's concern with durable achievement and teaching. Dependence on your approval can prevent colleagues from learning to work independently. The point to examine is whether the method remains open to correction. Make the reasoning available, especially when others have to carry the work forward without you.
Rigel Conjunct North Node
Learning becomes more demanding when somebody else needs your explanation. Rigel's educational reading gives this contact a direction through exchanges where questions can change your understanding. A course or sustained collaboration may provide that setting. A developing purpose can involve responsibility for making difficult material understandable, especially in a subject that continues to hold your attention after the initial enthusiasm has passed.
Rigel Conjunct Ascendant
Demonstrated competence gives people a reason to trust you. Robson gives lasting honours when Rigel rises, while the Anonymous of 379 includes property and building in its rising group. A longitude conjunction to the Ascendant differs from Rigel's actual rising because the star lies well south of the ecliptic. The personal reading concerns how people use your skill in everyday life, and the responsibilities people offer once they have seen your work.
Rigel Conjunct Midheaven
Holding a position can demand more patience than winning it. Robson's culminating account pairs lasting honours with gains earned through labour and anxiety, particularly in military or religious office. Brady's educator reading extends that responsibility into teaching in other occupations. Authority develops through doing the work and helping others understand it. Professional trust can deepen when colleagues learn something specific from the experience behind your decisions.
Paran Interpretations
Parans describe what happens when Rigel and a planet simultaneously occupy the four angles (rising, culminating, setting, nadir) at a given location.
Rigel in Paran with Sun
Rising
A child eager to demonstrate a newly learned skill fits this early-life reading of learning as a way to establish who you are.
Culminating
Public recognition centres on what you can teach from experience. At the height of working life, explain the method that others already trust you to use.
Setting
Expertise finds a fresh purpose in later relationships. Sharing responsibility allows someone else to develop the competence you once had to establish for yourself.
At the Nadir
Study pursued for its own sake sustains a private sense of purpose beyond professional status. Work another person can understand and continue has a life beyond your own practice.
Rigel in Paran with Moon
Rising
Learning to help sometimes becomes an early condition of feeling loved at home. Learning with someone patient helps separate affection from the pressure to perform.
Culminating
Teaching takes on emotional weight when others depend on your experience. In a public role, help students say which part they have yet to understand.
Setting
Acknowledgement may come late. Brady reads Leonardo's Rigel setting with the Moon at the nadir this way; mature satisfaction can include seeing others use your work.
At the Nadir
Repeated demonstrations and remembered habits pass knowledge between people at home. Later appreciation can concern the patient help that received little attention at the time.
Rigel in Paran with Mercury
Rising
Asking questions gives you a way to join in as a child. The teaching impulse starts with wanting a clear explanation and trying it out for yourself.
Culminating
Explaining difficult material becomes a visible responsibility. Professional confidence rests on a method that listeners can follow and use without constant help.
Setting
Students question familiar work as you grow older and change how you explain it. Conversation keeps expertise responsive as your formal responsibilities begin to change.
At the Nadir
A notebook kept for yourself gives another learner somewhere to begin. Quiet revision gives your accumulated knowledge a form that survives the original conversation.
Rigel in Paran with Venus
Rising
Making something with a friend or teacher gives skilled work the pleasure of company from the first attempts. Affection grows through the time spent making something together and learning how the other person works.
Culminating
Practised ability reaches public view through creative partnerships. In the middle years, recognition may depend on how well you support another person's contribution.
Setting
Shared interests give later relationships something to develop over time. Learning together can renew affection when the demands of achievement have become less pressing.
At the Nadir
Work made for someone close preserves a private act of care. The value of that shared craft may become clearer as its makers grow older.
Rigel in Paran with Mars
Rising
Hands-on challenges encourage early initiative. Learning by doing suits the educator reading, especially when someone teaches you how to recover from a failed attempt.
Culminating
Demonstrated skill becomes important under public pressure. At the busiest point of a career, patience with the work matters as much as speed.
Setting
Sharing difficult jobs tests your readiness to collaborate as you grow older. Teaching a technique can replace the habit of taking over whenever progress slows.
At the Nadir
Repeated practice keeps a skill ready for use without an audience. In private work or retirement, repeated attempts can produce a method worth passing to someone with less experience.
Rigel in Paran with Jupiter
Rising
A teacher enlarges your sense of what can be learned when you first take up a subject. Study becomes purposeful when you can see how an explanation helps another person.
Culminating
Knowledge reaches people beyond your own field as your professional experience grows. Brady's Kepler paran illustrates her educator reading; the explanation gives others a method they can use.
Setting
Unfamiliar questions keep teaching responsive as you grow older. Later students or partners can widen the purpose of work that once centred on personal advancement.
At the Nadir
Beliefs developed through long study offer steadiness in private life. Their later value lies in explanations that help others think for themselves.
Rigel in Paran with Saturn
Rising
Apprenticeship can start early, with demanding standards and much to practise. A patient teacher makes responsibility manageable before expertise has had time to develop.
Culminating
Responsibility grows around a skill acquired over years. Professional authority works best when you can explain both the procedure and the limits of your experience.
Setting
A successor needs to learn from your experience as you prepare to leave a role. Give them room to practise while there is still time to ask you questions.
At the Nadir
Long-maintained routines support work that receives little immediate notice. Late life may reveal how much others learned from your consistency and careful instruction.
Rigel in Paran with Ascendant
Rising
Demonstrating a skill becomes a way to express yourself with a teaching star angular at birth. Brady's rising timing makes the wish to demonstrate competence an early concern.
Culminating
Teaching becomes central to how others know you in the middle years with the star at the upper birth angle. Personal standing develops through work others can learn from.
Setting
Learning from a partner gives the educator reading a place in later relationships with a birth star on the western angle. Another person's questions can become central to how you understand yourself.
At the Nadir
Skills learned at home form a private foundation with the star at the lower birth angle. Skills developed away from attention may become what family or later students remember most clearly.
Rigel in Paran with Midheaven
Rising
Helping someone learn gives the teaching theme an early start with a star rising at birth. Vocational interest can begin with discovering that someone else understands your explanation.
Culminating
Education becomes a public responsibility with an upper-angle birth contact. Brady's middle-life emphasis fits responsibility for teaching the work on which your reputation rests.
Setting
Professional experience finds further use as a career draws to a close with the star at the western birth angle. A colleague or successor may provide a reason to explain the work in greater detail.
At the Nadir
Work sustained without professional attention may matter beyond the career itself with the star at the lower birth angle. Its later value may rest in what others can continue using.
Notable Charts
Johannes Kepler
Rigel culminating as Jupiter sets, a paran
Brady connects this contact with Kepler's laws of planetary motion and the educator's work of making knowledge available to others. [5]
Leonardo da Vinci
Rigel setting with the Moon on the Nadir, a paran
Brady uses Leonardo's ideas and inventions to illustrate the educator reading. She reads the setting star as recognition late in life or at its end. [5]
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Rigel conjunct the Sun mean?
With Rigel on your Sun, boldness needs patience. Robson combines courage and good fortune with haste and conflict. [1] The test comes when someone questions your judgment, especially in work you know well.
What degree is Rigel in 2026?
Rigel is at 17°12′ tropical Gemini in 2026. Robson gives 15°43′ Gemini in 1920. [1] A natal conjunction uses the degree for the birth year, which is about 16°50′ Gemini for someone born in 2000.
Why does Rigel link recognition with hard work?
Robson describes gains acquired through labor and anxiety at the Midheaven, alongside lasting honors. [1] The skill that wins a position still has to support the work of holding it. Allow time for duties that begin after the promotion.
Why does Brady call Rigel a teaching star?
Brady reads Rigel as Orion's active, educating side through her account of Osiris. Kepler's Jupiter paran is her example of knowledge made available to others. [5] Teaching puts what you have learned into a form someone else can apply, whether or not teaching is your occupation.
What does the name Rigel mean?
The name Rigel comes from Arabic: Rijl Jawza' al-Yusrā, meaning "Left Foot of the Central One." Beta Orionis. The star is known by 4 different cultural names across world traditions.
Sources
- Vivian E. Robson, The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology, American Federation of Astrologers, Inc., 1923. Used for entry 87, rival natures, angle and planet readings, and the 1920 longitude.
Text of the 1923 edition; the site quotes a 2017 reprint.
- Richard Hinckley Allen, Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, Dover Publications, Inc., 1899. Used for Rigel's Arabic derivation and 1521 attestation; Eridanus and Orwandil's toe; Orion's death and the Egyptian placements of Osiris and Isis.
- Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, translated by Frank Egleston Robbins, 1940. Used for the distinction between Orion's shoulders and its other bright stars in Book 1.9.
- Anonymous of 379, The Treatise on the Bright Fixed Stars, translated by Robert Schmidt, The Golden Hind Press, 1993. Used for the toe star's rising group, the Moon condition and Hand's identification.
- Bernadette Brady, Brady's Book of Fixed Stars, Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1998. Used for the educator reading, Ebertin as reported, heliacal rising and named planetary parans.
- Hephaistio of Thebes, Apotelesmatics, Book I, translated by Robert Schmidt, The Golden Hind Press, 1994. Used for the Zeus and Kronos assignment to Orion's remaining bright stars in Book 1.5.
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