Betelgeuse
Here is the first direct picture of the surface of a star other than our Sun. Taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, the atmosphere of Betelgeuse reveals some unexpected features, including a large bright hotspot visible below the center. Betelgeuse (sounds like “beetle juice”) is a red supergiant star about 600 light years distant, easily recognizable from its brightness and reddish color in the constellation of Orion . While Betelgeuse is cooler than the Sun , it is more massive and over 1000 times larger. If placed at the center of our Solar System , it would extend past the orbit of Jupiter . Betelgeuse is nearing the end of its life and will become a supernova in a perhaps a few tens of millions of years.