57 Orionis

Part of the pattern of stars that run northward along the Milky Way from the main body of Orion into a narrow region separating Taurus from Gemini. This group are usually interpreted as representing Orion's upraised club or sword, and 57 Orionis lies near its western extent, a little to the south of the brighter Chi¹ Orionis.

57 Orionis is a blue main sequence star, but an immensely hot and luminous one, generating some 10,000 times the energy of the Sun. Its absolute magnitude is -2.84, meaning that, if it lay ten parsecs from Earth, it would shine more brightly than Mars in the night sky. It is, however, much more distant than this, and its most recent parallax data suggests a distance of almost exactly 2,000 light years. 57 Orionis is a spectroscopic binary system, in which the primary blue star is a pulsating variable of the Beta Cephei type.