hip-50480

Its story

In Vela, the sail of the ancient ship Argo, gleams a blue B-type star, far hotter and more massive than the Sun. Its light took roughly 532 years to cross the void: it set out around 1493, just as Columbus was returning from his first voyage to the Americas and Europe was beginning to redraw its idea of the world. A blue spark, intense and youthful on stellar scales, fills the cosmic sail of the southern sky.