Kap

Its story

Kappa Andromedae is a blue B-type star about 168 light-years away, young and spinning at dizzying speed. In 2012 it entered modern observational history when telescopes directly imaged a giant planetary-mass companion orbiting it, now known as Kappa Andromedae b. It stands among the rare bright stars around which a distant world has been captured in a real photograph, rather than inferred from indirect signals.