Mu

Its story

Mu Centauri is a hot blue B-type giant some 506 light-years away, embedded deep in the Centaur. It is a textbook Be star: it spins so fast that it flings off an equatorial disc of hot gas, episodes that make its brightness flicker and wrap it in a veil invisible to the eye. Its blue-white light, delicate in the deep southern sky, set out toward us when printing presses were just being invented in Europe and no one yet suspected that stars could have spinning atmospheres of their own.