Stars live so long that they change little during our own much shorter lifetimes. For example, the Sun will eventually turn from yellow to orange and then red, but it’s a process that will play out over billions of years. Even so, a few rare stars have changed color in recent years. One is in Aquila, the eagle, which is in the eastern sky this evening. V1302 Aquilae is roughly 16,000 light-years from Earth, and it’s one of the most powerful stars in the galaxy. In the 1970s, it shined yellow-white. A star’s color indicates its surface temperature: the hottest stars are blue and the coolest are red; our yellow Sun is in between. When V1302 Aquilae was yellow-white, it was about the same temperature as the Sun. Since then, though, the star has heated up, so its color has changed from yellow-white to white. And astronomers suspect it was recently shining as a red star. The star is so massive that it’s destined to explode, but no one knows when that will happen or what color it will be whe
