hip-77840

Its story

2 Scorpii burns as a blue B-type star more than 500 light-years away, set against the Scorpion's body not far from the red heart of Antares. Its apparent magnitude of 4.59 masks an immense output: at such a distance, its luminosity outshines the Sun by hundreds of times. The radiation arriving tonight left its surface when European astronomers of the 16th century were still debating whether the Earth turned.