hip-117500

Its story

79 Pegasi is a white A-type star about 288 light-years away, in the great quadrilateral of the winged horse that rules the autumn sky. Its surface, close to ten thousand degrees, gives it a crisp, faintly bluish white. Its light set out late in the eighteenth century, just as Messier was publishing the final version of his famous catalogue of fuzzy objects —so they would not be mistaken for comets.