hip-59608

Its story

12 Virginis is a white A-type star roughly 164 light-years away, a close distance in stellar terms. It shines in the northern wing of the Virgin, that broad spring constellation the Sun crosses at the start of northern autumn. The light reaching us tonight slipped away in the middle of the nineteenth century, in the years when Neptune was being discovered through pure calculation and spectroscopy was beginning to unravel the matter of the stars.