Spica
Blue giant (close binary) · Alpha Virginis
Brightest star in Virgo
Spica is the luminous blue beacon of Virgo and is actually a very close pair of hot stars orbiting every four days, so near that mutual gravity distorts them into egg shapes. The pair is a rotating ellipsoidal variable detectable only by spectroscopy.
Illustration generated from temperature, not a photograph
11.4 ☉
mass (the Sun = 1)
21 thousand ×
as bright as the Sun
25,300 K
surface · blue-white star
7 R☉
radius (the Sun = 1)
250 ly
from Earth
1.0
apparent magnitude
It pours out about 21 thousand times the Sun’s light. Its light has been travelling 250 years to reach us, so you see Spica as it was 250 years ago.
Source · View on Wikidata
It lives in
Milky Way
Barred spiral galaxy.
Other notable stars in Milky Way
Eta CarinaeLuminous blue variableAlnilamBlue supergiantVY Canis MajorisRed hypergiantAlnitakHot blue supergiantDenebBlue-white supergiantMintakaHot blue giant multiple star
Stars of similar brightness
MimosaBlue giant26 thousand ×AcruxBlue subgiant (multiple system)31 thousand ×HadarBlue giant32 thousand ×CanopusYellow-white bright giant13 thousand ×MiraRed giant (pulsating variable)9 thousand ×BetelgeuseRed supergiant60 thousand ×
Worlds in the same direction on the sky→