hip-88771

Its story

72 Ophiuchi burns with the calm white light typical of A-type stars, set within the sky region the ancients pictured as the serpent-bearer. Its glow reaches us after nearly eighty-seven years of travel through the void —when that light departed, radio was still a young invention on Earth—. It is not the most famous resident of Ophiuchus, yet its cold, clean hue makes it a precise marker among the summer constellations of the northern sky.