hip-66065

Its story

In sinuous Hydra, the largest of the constellations, a white A-type star gleams about 234 light years away. Its light departed around 1792, while the French National Convention was abolishing the monarchy and the Republican calendar was being introduced. Hotter than the Sun and of a brilliant white, it displays in its spectrum the powerful imprint of hydrogen. The celestial serpent, which stretches its body across more than a hundred degrees of longitude, offers it an almost endless stage on which to glide, far from the busiest constellations of the sky.