Wezen

Its story

Wezen, from the Arabic for «the heavy one», is a yellow supergiant set in Canis Major, some 1,607 light-years from the Earth, distant even by the stellar standards of its kind. Its name describes with surprising accuracy what modern astronomers confirmed centuries later: a vast, slow star of overwhelming mass and luminosity sustained over long ages. The light reaching a European observer tonight left the star while the Visigothic kingdoms still ruled almost the entire Iberian peninsula, and the old Roman roads were just beginning to fade under the undergrowth.