Alp

Its story

Alpha Mensae is the brightest star of Mensa, the little constellation named by the astronomer Lacaille after Table Mountain in South Africa, from which he mapped the southern sky in the eighteenth century. It is the only alpha among all constellations that fails to reach naked-eye visibility under an average sky: a discreet solar analogue, barely 33 light years away, surprisingly similar to our own Sun. A silent neighbour in an otherwise empty region of the firmament.