hip-42568

Its story

A blue beacon in the constellation Carina, its light set out 1443 years ago, when the Byzantine Empire was reorganising under Justinian and Visigothic kingdoms consolidated Iberia. It is a variable —its glow breathes with a slow pulse that modern astronomers decode as inner vibrations of its atmosphere. A B-class star, far hotter and more massive than the Sun, able to illuminate vast volumes of the southern cosmos.