hip-31457

Its story

The southern Dove, sketched in the sixteenth century by Dutch sailors among the southern constellations, hosts a white star whose light began its journey five hundred and ten years ago, just as Erasmus was publishing his Praise of Folly. Hotter and more luminous than the Sun, its surface near nine thousand degrees lends it a pearly, clean, daylight tone. Barely hinted at by the naked eye, it belongs nonetheless to that small choir of stars which gather and reflect the quiet elegance of pure white.