Achernar

Its story

Achernar marks the end of Eridanus, the celestial river, and its Arabic name «akhir an-nahr» means just that: «the river's end». It is a blue star spinning so fast that it visibly flattens at the poles, a luminous spinning top 139 light-years away. The light arriving tonight set out in the last decade of the nineteenth century, when gas lamps still burned in many European cities.