hip-23916

Its story

In the river of Eridanus, this hot blue B-type star glows about 680 light-years distant. Its light departed around 1346, just before the Black Death swept across Europe and as the Hundred Years' War was taking shape. Hotter and brighter than the Sun, it radiates with the blue fury proper to its class. It arrives now to us as a luminous message from the fourteenth century, after nearly seven centuries crossing space.