Alruba

Its story

Alruba shines white at 533 light-years from the Earth, in the constellation Draco, one of the oldest constellations of the northern hemisphere sky. Its Arabic name means «the filly»: an image of a young, swift, wild animal applied with a certain irony to a distant, modest star with no major visible changes across the long stretch of recorded observation. The light now crossing the European sky left the star when the Catholic Monarchs were preparing their definitive entry into Granada, with no inkling yet that a Genoese sailor would soon offer to cross the ocean for a new route to the Indies.