hip-20354

Its story

53 Persei is the prototype of an entire class of pulsators: the so-called «53 Persei stars» or slowly pulsating B-type stars, identified in 1985 by Waelkens and Rufener. Its surface does not swell and shrink as a whole, but ripples —different regions rise and fall at once— in non-radial pulsations with a 2.36-day period. The BRITE satellite later detected eight distinct frequencies in its light, as if the star were silently sounding chords from 507 light-years away.