Betelgeuse, of the constellation Orion, is a red super giant star and one of the largest visible to the naked eye. It is huge. If it were at the center of our Solar System, its surface would lie beyond the asteroid belt and it would engulf the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Calculations of Betelgeuse’s mass/weight range from slightly under ten to a little over twenty times that of the Sun. Betelgeuse is expected to end with a supernova explosion, most likely within 100,000 years. When Betelgeuse explodes, it will shine as bright as the half-Moon for more than three months. Life on Earth will be unharmed.

North (toward Polaris) is up in the photo. The picture was taken with a fully modified Canon Rebel camera (this is my one shot color camera) on a TEC 140 telescope (refractor) in the Alpenglow-Torrey House Observatory in the dark sky community of Torrey, Utah (Bortle 2-3).

Ten 10 second sub-frames were used and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker = one minute 40 second photo. Binned 2X2. Unguided, no darks or flats. Processed in Photoshop (CS5).

Location in the night sky of Betelgeuse:

Source: Wikipedia