hip-40107

Its story

Two hundred and ninety years ago, as the Enlightenment was igniting the first encyclopaedias in Paris, a yellow star in Hydra released the ray that arrives tonight. It shares the temperate hue of the Sun, that golden light which colours sunrises, yet its larger frame makes it an evolved elder sister. Hydra is the longest constellation in the sky, a cosmic serpent that slides across the night for hours; in one of its coils beats this discreet star, almost at the limit of unaided sight.