hip-7650

Its story

40 Cassiopeiae is a yellow, somewhat evolved star in northern Cassiopeia, the W-shaped silhouette every northern-hemisphere stargazer learns to recognise before even the Plough. At 458 light-years away, it does not stand out within the constellation, but its light shares the same field threaded by the autumn Milky Way. The flicker now visible left its surface as the great Renaissance humanists were beginning to turn Europe upside down.