Piautos

Its story

Piautos, a hot and luminous blue star, shines in the northern claw of the Crab, in a constellation that ancient Chinese astronomers identified with a wandering ghost trapped in the winter sky. It is far: 458 light-years, in a modest but ancient corner of the heavens. The faint light crossing the firmament tonight set out in the late sixteenth century, when Tycho Brahe was observing the supernova that would change astronomy forever.