hip-32226

Its story

In Monoceros, some 2,861 light-years away, burns this blue type B star, one of the hottest in the catalogue. Its light set out around the 9th century, when Charlemagne had just died and Carolingian monks copied manuscripts by candlelight. Far hotter, more massive and more luminous than the Sun, it shines with the clean hardness of sapphire across a distance spanning half a millennium of history.