The

Its story

Theta Aquilae burns blue at 286 light-years, marking the tail of the Eagle that cuts across the summer Milky Way. B-type stars like this one consume their hydrogen with ferocious appetite: they live fast, blaze blue-white, and die young by cosmic measure. Its light set out when Europe still argued the Enlightenment, arriving now on time, intact, to a sky in no hurry to forget it.