In 1961, the Polish-Australian astronomer Antoni Przybylski discovered that this star had a peculiar spectrum that would not fit into the standard framework for stellar classification.

[7] Przybylski's Star possibly also contains many different short-lived actinide elements, with actinium, protactinium, neptunium, plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium, californium, and einsteinium being theoretically detected.

[4] It is considered likely to be a main sequence star with a temperature somewhat hotter than the Sun, but with its spectral lines strongly blanketed by the extreme abundances of certain metals.

It shines with a bolometric luminosity of about 5.6 L☉ at an effective temperature of 6,131 K. It has a very slow projected rotational velocity for a hot main sequence star of just 3.5 km/s.

One such theory is that the star contains some long-lived nuclides from the island of stability (such as 298Fl or 304Ubn) and that the observed short-lived actinides are the daughters of these progenitors, occurring in secular equilibrium with their parents.

[27][28] It was suggested that stellar wind from a nearby neutron star companion could produce the observed radioactive elements, but subsequent radial velocity measurements appeared to exclude this possibility.

[29] More recently it has been proposed that a companion may be present but impossible to observe with radial velocity methods if it orbits in the plane of sky (i.e, has an inclination of 0°).