hip-47175

Its story

It pulses white and serene in Vela, some 105 light-years away. The light now reaching our telescopes set out around 1920, when radio first crossed the oceans as an everyday wonder. A type A star —hotter, more massive and far more luminous than the Sun—, a bluish bonfire ageing gracefully within a constellation carved from the ancient ship of the Argonauts.