hip-94477

Its story

21 Aquilae is a blue beacon over 700 light-years away in the body of the Eagle, a physical oddity: an Alpha² Canum Venaticorum variable whose magnetic field is strong enough to sort chemical elements across its surface. Each rotation shows a different face, and its brightness drifts faintly around magnitude 5.14. Classed as variable in 1972, it is an exotic spin on stellar order —magnetism dictating which face we see.