hip-418

Its story

In the W traced by Cassiopeia — the mythical queen condemned to the sky for her vanity — pulses a bluish B-type star, its brightness wavering with a silent rhythm. Its 723 light-years set out at the full crystallization of the Italian Renaissance, when Giotto was beginning to paint credible human volumes and breaking from centuries of Byzantine flatness. Its flicker is the celestial echo of that slow awakening of form.