Meet Altair, the Eagle's Eye
Reported bySky & Telescope ↗·Sourced by Goodlede
Altair, the twelfth-brightest star at just 16.7 light-years away, rotates so rapidly (completing a full rotation every 10 hours at 650,000 mph equatorial velocity) that its shape stretches into an oblate spheroid with a cooler, darker equator—a phenomenon called gravity darkening first predicted in 1924. Astronomers at CHARA have directly imaged this star's surface and visible details, a rarity for stars that normally appear as featureless points of light.
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