hip-88601

Its story

70 Ophiuchi is a binary system just 16.6 light-years away, where two orange dwarfs circle each other every 88 years. In 1779, William Herschel proved its two components were gravitationally bound —one of the first demonstrations that Newton's law applied beyond the Solar System—. In 1855, William Jacob even conjectured the presence of a planet within its orbit. It remains one of the most studied nearby binaries in the northern sky.