Iot

Its story

ι Arae burns blue-white within the southern Altar, some 935 light-years away. It is a variable Be star: its brightness flickers slightly every 13.4 hours while a gaseous disc forms and dissolves around its equator. With 8.3 solar masses, it radiates nearly eleven thousand times the Sun's light at a searing 20,000 K. A restless young star, marked by the violence of its own rotation.