hip-85699

Its story

24 Ursae Minoris burns some 153 light-years away, a white A-type star set into the body of the Lesser Bear, a step from Polaris. Because of its northern circumpolar position it never sinks below the horizon for European skies: it wheels slowly, night after night, around the axis of the world. Its light set out deep in the nineteenth century —the years helium was identified in the solar spectrum— and only now completes the journey.