hip-63143

Its story

In Ursa Major, the familiar asterism of the northern sky, shines this white A-type star two hundred eighty-two light years away. Its light departed around 1743, when Lavoisier was born in Paris and the chemical revolution that would name oxygen was being prepared. Hotter and more luminous than the Sun, it radiates with a pure, transparent white characteristic of stars still burning hydrogen in full vigor, gliding among the great figures of the celestial Plough.