Azha

Its story

Azha shines orange at 137 light-years from the Earth, set in a quiet bend of the constellation Eridanus. Its Arabic name derives from «al-`udhi», the ostrich's nest: astronomers of the Baghdad caliphate saw in this particular stretch of sky a flock of birds crouched on the sand, ready to take wing at first light of dawn. A warm, modest, unpretentious star, reaching the European eye from a time before domestic electricity and the lit cities that today wipe out, almost at a single stroke, most of what was once the night sky.