(chesley bonestell via repozytorium.amu.edu.pl›bitstream)

Well, my Pearltrees page is refusing to add any more new stuff, so i'll just update epsilon Aurigae here. I had just reread Poul Anderson's great story "Kyrie" (in: World's Best Science Fiction 1969 [which is given here as "2002"]); & it occurred to me to wonder what Anderson's scientific sources were in 1968. Probably, I concluded, Chesley Bonestell's painting (1960 in book form, but mid-50s in Life magazine). Wikipedia says the existing stellar models had been proposed in 1937, 1961, & 1965. Bonestell is clearly working from the 1937 "extremely cool 'semitransparent' star" version. Here is Struve writing about it in 1956. As of 2018, we can say that it is 1,600 light years away: "...the dimmer star originally weighed about 10 times the mass of the sun, while the now-bright star was just under five times as heavy as the sun. ...Today, the once-larger star has become a 2.2 solar-mass cool F-type star, while its companion became a 5.9 solar-mass B-dwarf surrounded by a disk." --Weird, but no longer monstrous. Oh well, I can always read the twitter account.

Of course, what has messed with my recollection all these years, is that "Kyrie" also (early on) also mentions the star epsilon Lyrae…

(via)