The

Its story

Theta Hydri is a hot blue star 515 light-years away, in the Male Water Snake — that austral coil traced between the Magellanic Clouds. Its B-type spectrum gives it a surface temperature above 15,000 degrees and a short, fierce life with no half-tones: it burns fast, radiates violently and will spend itself within a few hundred million years — a human eternity that, on stellar scales, is barely an instant.