hip-1191

Its story

In the vast Whale burns a blue-white B-type star, whose surface exceeds ten thousand degrees. Its light crossed three hundred thirty-nine years to reach us, departing around 1687, the year Newton published his Principia Mathematica in London and refounded modern physics. Hotter, more massive, and far more luminous than the Sun, it lives a brief and dazzling existence, leaving its bluish mark upon the silent back of Cetus.