hip-107649

Its story

Grus stretches its long neck across the southern sky, far from the bustle of more famous constellations. Among its points glows this yellow sun — nearly a twin of our own in colour, and remarkably close: its light took just 52 years to arrive. It set out in the late twentieth century, when Voyagers 1 and 2 had just visited Jupiter and Saturn and humans were seeing the rings in sharp detail for the first time. Having a G-type star this near is, for astronomers, a small silent gift of cosmic chance.