hip-70300

Its story

Deep in the southern Centaur burns a blue-white star whose light set out 457 years ago, around the time Galileo first turned his spyglass to the sky. Its brilliance is not constant —it pulses with a slow, breathing cadence—, the signature of hot youth and inner restlessness. Far more massive and luminous than the Sun, it belongs to the type-B embers that burn quickly and brilliantly. To watch it is to witness a brief cosmic adolescence.