hip-43121

Its story

50 Cancri is a white A-class star set between the claws of the Crab, not far from the famous Beehive cluster. At 176 light-years its near-pure hydrogen atmosphere makes it markedly hotter than the Sun and gives it a cold, clean tone at magnitude 5.89, at the very edge of naked-eye visibility. The light arriving tonight left its surface around 1850, when the first daguerreotype photographs of stars were being taken.