Betelgeuse and its gas plume, illustration. Betelgeuse, a red supergiant, is one of the largest stars currently known, with a radius around 1400 times larger than the Sun's. This supergiant star has a giant plume of gas almost as large as the solar system, and a massive bubble boiling on its surface. These structures were detected using the ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT). This discovery helps to explain how supergiant stars shed material at a tremendous rate. Betelguese is located around 600 light years from Earth, in the constellation of Orion. The scales show the distances in terms of the radius of Betelgeuse (left) as well as in astronomical units (AU, right, the Earth-Sun distance). A comparison with the scale of the solar system is also provided, with the planets labelled. For this image without the labels, see C048/0818. Image published in 2009.