hip-106642

Its story

In Cygnus, beside the luminous stream of the summer Milky Way, pulses a variable red M-class giant whose light set out around 1455, when Gutenberg was printing his Bible and opening the modern age of the book. Its brightness does not hold still: it oscillates with a serene rhythm typical of stars that have reached the end of their evolution. Far cooler than the Sun yet enormously larger, it radiates a deep, old-blood glow, almost melancholic.