The-2

Its story

Theta-2 Crucis is a spectroscopic binary at the edge of the Southern Cross, two blue stars locked in an extremely tight 3.4-day orbit. One of them is a Beta Cephei variable: it pulses with slight brightness shifts between magnitudes 4.70 and 4.74 while turning with its partner. The light arriving now set out some 854 years ago, when Pacific navigators were already using the Cross for bearings yet Europe had not formally named this knot of hot stars.