hip-70753

Its story

52 Hydrae burns blue at nearly four hundred light-years, one of the hot stars scattered along the reaches of Hydra, the sky's largest and longest constellation. Its light set out when European astronomers had not yet invented the modern refracting telescope. Faint to the naked eye, its B spectral class reveals a surface temperature far above that of the Sun and a stellar life destined to be brief and luminous.