Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Betelgeuse trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Betelgeuse is the reddest bright star in the sky, big enough to swallow Mars's orbit, and it made headlines in 2019 when it faded so hard that people wondered whether it was about to explode. This quiz covers the star from every angle: where it sits in Orion, its Bayer letter, its size, mass, distance and age, the type II supernova to come, its runaway motion and bow shock, and the 1920 measurement that made it the first star beyond the Sun to have its disk sized. You will also meet the Great Dimming and the dust that caused it, the Hubble image of 1995, the candidate companion Siwarha, the Arabic phrase behind the name and its 'armpit' mistranslation, the Beetlejuice pronunciation, Ptolemy, John Herschel, the Heike clan, the Lakota chief and the Inuit 'large star'. Easy questions suit any stargazer; the expert tier asks for asteroids, observatories and Sanskrit. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Betelgeuse, Orion and the Winter Triangle, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on stars and constellations and on the Solar System.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Betelgeuse lies in which constellation?
Orion
It is usually the tenth-brightest star in the night sky.
Q 02What type of star is Betelgeuse?
Red supergiant
Its spectral classification is M1-2 Ia-ab: very large, luminous and cool.
Q 03What is Betelgeuse's Bayer designation?
Alpha Orionis
Bayer probably ranked it first because its variability made it rival its usually brighter neighbour.
Q 04Which star is the only one in its constellation brighter than Betelgeuse?
Rigel
John Herschel nonetheless saw Betelgeuse outshine it in October 1837 and again in November 1839.
Q 05Betelgeuse's apparent magnitude varies between +0.0 and roughly what?
+1.6
Its main period of variation is near 400 days.
Q 06At which wavelengths is Betelgeuse the brightest star in the night sky?
Near-infrared
Its cool surface pours out most of its energy as heat rather than visible light.
Q 07If Betelgeuse sat at the centre of the Solar System, its surface would lie beyond which zone?
The asteroid belt
It would swallow the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
Q 08Betelgeuse's radius is estimated at between 640 and how many times that of the Sun?
764
Estimates vary because the star is not spherical and pulsates.
Q 09Estimates of Betelgeuse's mass range from slightly under ten to a little over how many solar masses?
20
Modern modelling gives 9.5 to 21 solar masses; older studies ranged from 5 to 30.
Q 10Early-2020s estimates put Betelgeuse's distance at roughly how many light-years?
400 to 600
That is an unusually wide uncertainty for such a nearby star; a 2020 study gave about 548 light-years.
Q 11Betelgeuse is expected to explode as a supernova most likely within how long?
100,000 years
Despite headlines during the 2019-20 dimming, astronomers do not think the explosion is imminent.
Q 12When Betelgeuse finally detonates, it will shine about as bright as what for more than three months?
The half-Moon
Life on Earth will be unharmed; the star is too far for its X-rays or ejecta to matter.
Q 13Which class of supernova is Betelgeuse expected to produce?
Type II
A small dense remnant, either a neutron star or a black hole, will be left behind.
Q 21What is the 2019-20 episode of fading commonly called?
The Great Dimming
The star returned to normal, peaking at magnitude 0.0 in April 2023.
Q 22What did a follow-up study conclude had caused the 2019-20 fading?
Dust from a surface mass ejection
Material hurled millions of miles from the star cooled into dust that blocked its light.
Q 23Infrared data showed no significant change in Betelgeuse's luminosity over how many years?
50
That pointed to extinction around the star rather than anything happening inside it.
Q 14Betelgeuse is younger than how many million years?
10
Its huge mass made it burn through its life at a furious pace.
Q 15Betelgeuse is a runaway star ejected from which stellar association, home to the three Belt stars?
Orion OB1
It moves through the interstellar medium at 30 km/s, pushing a bow shock over four light-years wide.
Q 16In 1920, Betelgeuse became the first star beyond the Sun to have what measured?
Its angular size
A six-metre interferometer mounted on the Mount Wilson telescope did it.
Q 17Which two scientists' Mount Wilson interferometer first measured Betelgeuse's diameter?
Michelson and Pease
They found 0.047 arcseconds, though limb darkening left the figure uncertain.
Q 18Which star took over from Betelgeuse as having the largest angular diameter of any star except the Sun?
R Doradus
It is much closer, about 200 light-years away, and physically only a third the size.
Q 19Which instrument captured the first direct image of another star's disk, Betelgeuse, in 1995?
Hubble Space Telescope
Its Faint Object Camera took the ultraviolet picture, beating ground-based interferometers.
Q 20Starting in October 2019, Betelgeuse's brightness fell by roughly what factor by mid-February 2020?
3
It dropped from magnitude 0.5 to 1.7, out of the top 20 brightest stars.
Q 24What name has been proposed for Betelgeuse's candidate companion star, meaning 'her bracelet' in Arabic?
Siwarha
The IAU Working Group on Star Names recognised it on 22 September 2025.
Q 25The name Betelgeuse comes from an Arabic phrase meaning 'the hand of' what?
Al-Jawzā', i.e. Orion
A 13th-century misreading of one Arabic letter turned Yad into Bet, giving Europe its odd name.
Q 26Betelgeuse is often mistranslated as the '___ of the central one'.
Armpit
Renaissance writers read the Arabic as Baţ al-Jauzā', though the real word for armpit is Ibţ.
Q 27Which 1988 film popularised the soft-g pronunciation of the star's name?
Beetlejuice
Michael Keaton's character is spelled like the star.
Q 28Which classical astronomer described the star's colour as hypókirrhos, 'more or less orange-tawny'?
Ptolemy
Chinese astronomers three centuries earlier recorded it as yellow, hinting it may have been a yellow supergiant then.
Q 29Which astronomer first described Betelgeuse's variable brightness, in his 1836 Outlines of Astronomy?
Sir John Herschel
Aboriginal groups in South Australia had told oral tales of the variability for far longer.
Q 30Which Japanese clan adopted Betelgeuse and its red colour as its symbol?
The Taira (Heike)
Their rivals took the white star at Orion's foot, so the two stars faced off across the Belt like the clans in their legendary war.