Chi

Its story

Chi-1 Herculis is a close neighbour of the Sun, just 51 light-years away, a yellowish-white F-type star notable for its metal-poor composition: it carries far less iron and oxygen than the Sun, making it a witness to an older epoch of the galaxy. Its light took only half a century to arrive: what we see today set out around the year DNA was identified as a double helix, while Hercules holds his club motionless in the summer sky.