V795 Centauri

This blue dwarf is part of a swarm of more than four hundred stars that form the Scorpius-Centaurus Association, a collection of stars with related origins scattered across the regions around Centaurus. This is a group of the kind known as an OB association, consisting mainly of hot and relatively young blue stars, and the Scorpius-Centaurus Association is the closest star-grouping of this kind to the Solar System.

V795 Centauri is one of the more distant members of this group, lying more than four hundred light years from the Sun. The entire association is so large that is is subdivided into three smaller subgroups, and V795 Centauri belongs to the central grouping, known as the Upper Centaurus-Lupus subgroup, which runs through eastern Centaurus and neighbouring Lupus.

V795 Centauri is rather larger than the Sun, at about three times its diameter, but emits hundreds of times more energy. It is an eruptive variable of the Gamma Cassiopeiae type, characterised by expulsions of matter from the star's equatorial regions that form rings of material extending out from the star. In the case of V795 Centauri, these eruptions can cause the star's brightness to vary by a factor of some 14%.