Cor Caroli

Its story

Cor Caroli, «Charles's Heart», was named in the seventeenth century in honour of King Charles I of England, the tradition holding that it shone unusually brightly the night his son made his triumphant return to London. It is a white A-type star 115 light-years away, prototype of a class of magnetic variables: its field is thousands of times stronger than the Sun's and drags exotic chemical elements to its surface. It glows alone in Canes Venatici, beneath the tail of the Great Bear.