Distant blue star, 8,000 light-years away, 31,000 Kelvin

Data source: ESA Gaia DR3

Gaia DR3 6028904284255792256: a distant blue beacon in the Milky Way

In the vast tapestry of our galaxy, some stars glow with a pure, electric blue that hints at a fiery interior. Gaia DR3 6028904284255792256 is one such luminous traveler. With a surface temperature hovering around 31,500 Kelvin, this star shines blue-white, radiating energy far more energetic than our Sun. Yet, despite its brilliance, it lies far enough away that its light reaches Earth faintly—about a 14th magnitude in Gaia’s G band, and roughly 8,000 light-years distant. Studying this star offers a window into how astronomers measure distances, temperatures, and sizes across the Milky Way, using the exquisite precision of Gaia’s DR3 catalog.

To the casual observer, the night sky seems a static map; to the trained eye, it becomes a factory of measurements. The star we’re highlighting—Gaia DR3 6028904284255792256—embodies that transformation. Its coordinates place it in the southern celestial hemisphere at right ascension about 17 hours 12 minutes and declination around −29 degrees. In practical terms for observers, that puts the star low in the southern sky for many mid-latitude observers, especially in the months when the southern heavens dominate the evening. It is a reminder that the cosmos is both distant and intimate, visible only through careful instrumentation and patient observation.

What the numbers reveal about this blue star

• Distance and scale: Gaia DR3 6028904284255792256 sits about 2,453 parsecs away from us. That translates to roughly 8,000 light-years—an immense journey across the Milky Way. In the grand scheme, this distance places the star well within the thin disk of our galaxy, where many young and hot stars congregate. The sheer remoteness highlights how Gaia’s precise measurements allow us to map the galaxy’s 3D structure with astonishing clarity.
• Brightness and visibility: The Gaia G-band magnitude of about 14.37 means the star is far too faint to see with the naked eye in typical dark-sky conditions. Even with binoculars or a small telescope, it would require a decent aperture and stable observing conditions to detect. For professional surveys, such a magnitude is very common for hot, distant stars that blaze in ultraviolet and blue light but appear dim in the Gaia band when viewed from Earth’s orbit around the Sun.
• Temperature and color: With an effective temperature around 31,500 Kelvin, the star sits firmly in the blue-white regime. In the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, this places it among the hot, early-type stars—spectral types near O9 to B0. That blue color signals a surface that roars with energy, radiating more intensely at shorter wavelengths than the Sun.
• Size and luminosity: The radius reported by Gaia is about 5.8 times that of the Sun. When you combine this size with the high temperature, the star would be extraordinarily luminous—tiring the imagination with a luminosity on the order of tens of thousands of solar luminosities. In other words, this star shines fiercely and from a great distance, carving a bright footprint across the galactic neighborhood even as its light takes millennia to reach us.
• : The Gaia photometry shows magnitudes in multiple bands (BP and RP). Here, BP magnitude is around 15.98 and RP around 13.16, yielding a BP−RP color index near +2.8. That sizable color index would usually imply a redder, cooler star, which might seem at odds with the very hot temperature. In practice, this mismatch can arise from photometric uncertainties, filter effects, or reddening by interstellar dust along the line of sight. It’s a gentle reminder that a star’s color in one survey band can be influenced by factors beyond temperature alone, and that robust classifications often rely on a combination of color, temperature estimates, and spectral data.
• Motion and position context: The provided coordinates anchor this star to a specific spot in the sky, enabling astronomers to cross-match Gaia DR3 data with ground-based spectra, infrared surveys, and potential variability studies. The combination of precise location, distance, and temperature opens pathways to understanding the star’s age, evolutionary state, and its kin—the hot, massive stars that illuminate star-forming regions and sculpt their surroundings with intense radiation.