hip-42028

Its story

In Hydra, the winding serpent stretching over a quarter of the sky, shines this white A-type star, dominated by hot hydrogen. Its light set out 295 years ago, around 1729, when James Bradley was discovering stellar aberration and confirming Earth's motion. Hotter and more luminous than the Sun, its crisp glow lends the longest constellation of the firmament a point of almost crystalline white purity.