Sig

Its story

σ Columbae shines at 1664 light-years from the small southern Dove, a constellation invented in the sixteenth century to depict the biblical bird of the flood. To reach us at the brightness it shows, this F-class star must outshine the Sun hundreds of times over — one of those rare beacons capable of piercing wide galactic distances. Its light departed just as the Western Roman Empire had collapsed.