hip-99848

Its story

32 Cygni glows in the heart of the Swan as a double beacon: an orange K7 supergiant paired with a far hotter blue B-type companion. Every 1,147 days the giant eclipses its partner, and astronomers use those windows to map the extended stellar wind —yielding some of the finest portraits ever made of a supergiant atmosphere. The light arriving tonight set out over a thousand years ago, while medieval Europe still tracked time by harvests.