Alnasl

Its story

Alnasl forms the tip of Sagittarius's arrow, exactly where the archer aims at the heart of the Milky Way. Its Arabic name, «An-Naṣl», means precisely «the point», and it sits some 97 light-years away as an orange K-type giant. Pointing toward it on a dark night is to gaze toward the galactic centre: in that very direction, roughly 26,000 light-years beyond, beats Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole that anchors our entire stellar neighbourhood.