hip-41325

Its story

In Cancer, that discreet zodiacal constellation, this yellow G-type star shines at nearly four hundred light-years. Its light departed around 1631, the year Pierre Gassendi observed for the first time a transit of Mercury across the Sun —the earliest visual confirmation of Kepler's predictions—. Cooler and older than many of its neighbours, it belongs to that category of stars to which the sky has granted no name.