Mars appears to have a shadow this evening – a faint star with one of the more lyrical names in the heavens: Zavijava. Mars looks like a fairly bright orange star, quite low in the west as darkness falls. Zavijava is almost touching it. It’s a good bit fainter than Mars, though, so you might want to use binoculars to enhance the view.

Zavijava is a pretty close neighbor. According to the Gaia space telescope, it’s just 35.88 light-years away. Only a few dozen stars that are visible to the unaided eye are closer.

The star’s name comes from an Arabic phrase that means “corner of the barking dog.” But Zavijava isn’t related to any of the dogs in the night sky. Instead, it’s one of the brighter stars of the constellation Virgo, so it’s also known as Beta Virginis.

Zavijava is a little bit bigger and heavier than the Sun. It’s younger than the Sun by roughly one-and-a-half billion years. But because of its greater heft, it’s already nearing the end of the main phase of life. Before long – on the astronomical timescale – it’ll undergo a series of changes in its core. That will make the star much bigger and brighter. It will remain in that phase for hundreds of millions of years.

Over the past few decades, astronomers have reported the discovery of several possible planets around the star. None of those reports has stood up. But the search continues – for worlds orbiting Zavijava.

Script by Damond Benningfield