hip-20087

Its story

51 Tauri is a yellow-white F-type star in the field of the Bull, not far from the Hyades, the V-shaped cluster that traces the mythical animal's head. A touch hotter and brighter than the Sun, it lies just 176 light-years away —a modest distance by stellar standards— and its light set out around 1850, when Foucault was demonstrating Earth's rotation in Paris with his famous pendulum beneath the Panthéon's dome.