hip-18141

Its story

30 Eridani is a hot blue B-type star kindled some 586 light-years away, along the celestial meander of the river Eridanus. Its surface reaches temperatures that double or triple the Sun's, yielding the violet-blue light only the youngest and most massive stars can sustain. The beam crossing Earth's atmosphere tonight set out around the fifteenth century —the years of the first European ocean voyages— and returns in northern winter, snaking southward.