Rho

Its story

It belongs to the rare family of Lambda Boötis stars: a hot white whose atmosphere shows an anomalous shortfall of iron and other metals — barely a tenth of what the Sun carries. At 118 light-years away in Virgo, it also counts among the Delta Scuti pulsators, with faint oscillations no greater than a hundredth of a magnitude every few hours. A disc of dust, or an interstellar cloud being traversed, explains the gentle infrared excess it radiates.