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Alcyone |
 | | All nine are bright and luminous B stars, Alcyone apparently somewhat evolved (a class B7 giant), and though (at 13,000 Kelvin) not the hottest, quite markedly the brightest, having a luminosity 2400 times that of the Sun (much in the ultraviolet), the 430-light year distance of the group reducing Alcyone to bright third magnitude (2.87). |
 | | Alcyone, rotating with an equatorial speed of some 215 kilometers per second (more than 100 times faster than the Sun, giving it a rotation period of under 2.3 days), has spun gas from its equator into a surrounding light-emitting disk to make a "B-emission star" somewhat like |
 | | The nebula is particularly bright around Merope, just to the southwest of Alcyone, though bright Alcyone carries her own blue covering shawl. |
| www.astro.uiuc.edu /~kaler/sow/alcyone.html (445 words) |
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