Lam

Its story

Lambda Pavonis is a blue supergiant burning at some 1,430 light-years away in the tail of the southern Peacock. It belongs to the rare Be variables: an enormous, hot star spinning close to its breakup limit, intermittently shedding discs of glowing gas. Its light set out before Europeans had charted Australia's coastlines, and when it reaches our telescopes it tells the story of a sun tens of thousands of times more luminous than our own, living at extreme speed.