Bet

Its story

Beta Lupi —once Romanised as Kekouan from a Chinese name meaning «fourth imperial guard»— burns above 24,000 K within the body of the southern Wolf. A blue giant of about nine solar masses, still young at twenty-five million years, it pulses every five hours as a Beta Cephei variable. When its hydrogen runs out it will hesitate at the edge of detonation: a credible, if uncertain, candidate to end as a supernova.