 Distinctly reddish-tinted, it is a semiregular variable star whose apparent magnitude oscillates between 0.2 and 1.2, the widest range of any first magnitude star.It marks the upper right vertex of the Winter Triangle and center of the Winter Hexagon.There is considerable controversy about the Arabic language origin of the name Betelgeuse, with some dozens of possible derivations and spellings proposed and used across history.