hip-104105

Its story

In Cepheus gleams a blue B-type star, far hotter and more massive than the Sun. Its light took some 403 years to cross the void: it set out around 1622, when Kepler was publishing his final planetary tables and the Thirty Years' War was setting central Europe ablaze. That bluish fire, youthful and fierce on stellar scales, now adorns the silhouette of the king chained to the celestial north pole.