Alrakis

Its story

Alrakis comes from the Arabic 'al-raqis', 'the dancer', perhaps named for the wavering brightness that ancient astronomers thought they perceived in it during the long northern nights. It belongs to the circumpolar Draco, one of the longest constellations in the northern sky, as a yellow-white F-type star some 76 light-years away. The light crossing the northern sky tonight set out around 1950, the year the world's first commercial computer was switched on.