hip-3721

Its story

23 Cassiopeiae forms part of the famous W of Cassiopeia, one of the most recognisable shapes of the northern sky and always visible from mid-northern latitudes. It is a blue B-type star, fiercely hot, whose light travels around seven hundred and seventy-one years before reaching Earth. Its photons set out in the depths of the Middle Ages, when European monasteries were still copying the manuscripts of classical learning by hand.