Sig

Its story

Sigma Phoenicis is a hot blue type B star burning some 604 light-years away, in the bird that rises from its ashes. The constellation was traced by the Flemish navigators Keyser and de Houtman at the end of the sixteenth century, on their voyages to the East Indies, when the southern skies were being mapped for the first time with modern instruments. Sigma belongs to the plumage of that newly named bird.