hip-39236

Its story

5 Cancri sits 540 light-years away in Cancer, a modest but ancient zodiacal constellation. It is a Be-type star: it spins so fast that it has built around itself a faint disc of gas, with a radius about three times that of the star itself. Hot and blue, of class B, it looks calm to the naked eye, but its spectrum reveals a turbulent surface and an environment in constant reconfiguration.