hip-88765

Its story

71 Ophiuchi is a G-type star —a spectral cousin of the Sun— yet sitting 273 light-years away and far more luminous, a sign that it has swollen its atmosphere with age. It lives in Ophiuchus, the Serpent-Bearer, the thirteenth zodiacal figure the Sun crosses every November without the horoscope ever noting it. Its warm, almost solar light reaches us after a journey that began in the 18th century.