Alp

Its story

Alpha Telescopii is the dominant light of a modern constellation, the Telescope, drawn in the eighteenth century by Lacaille in honour of the instrument that opened the southern sky. A blue B3 subgiant, it burns at 16,700 K and radiates close to 800 solar luminosities from 278 light-years away. Five times the Sun's mass, with a longitudinal magnetic field measured in hundreds of gauss, it has already begun to leave the main sequence.