Despite Meissa being more luminous and only slightly further away than Rigel, it appears 3 magnitudes dimmer at visual wavelengths, with much of its radiation emitted in the ultraviolet due to its high temperature.

The outer atmosphere has an effective temperature of around 35,000 K,[8] giving it the characteristic blue glow of a hot O-type star.

[20] The stellar wind of Meissa is well characterized by a mass-loss rate of 2.5×10−8 solar masses per year and a terminal velocity of 2,000 km/s.

It is thought to be the remains of a supernova explosion, now ionized by the ultraviolet radiation from Meissa itself and some of the surrounding hot stars.

The intense ultraviolet energy being radiated by this star is creating the Sh2-264[26] H II region in the neighboring volume of space, which in turn is surrounded by an expanding ring of cool gas that has an age of about 2–6 million years.

Such an event would also explain the star's peculiar velocity with respect to the center of the expanding ring, as the explosion and resulting mass loss could have kicked Meissa out of the system.