hip-82422

Its story

50 Herculis is a red giant over a thousand light-years away, one of the few M-type stars the naked eye still catches in Hercules. Its cool, ruddy surface stands in stark contrast to the white and blue stars that dominate the sky: here heat loses the contest and ruby wins. Magnitude 5.73 places it just inside the visual threshold from dark sites —a deep ember on the hero's flank.