hip-50493

Its story

In Vela shines a yellow-white star of F type whose light set out one hundred and eighteen years ago, just when Einstein was publishing his first papers on relativity and reshaping the very notion of time. Slightly hotter than the Sun, it sheds a pale-gold glow, neither truly warm nor truly cool, characteristic of its class. It is a serene point in the rigging of the old celestial ship, a light that serves as a counterweight to the larger embers and still crosses the southern sky every night.