hip-110000

Its story

42 Aquarii burns orange in the Water Bearer, a K-type giant some 587 light-years away that has left behind the quiet burning of its youth. Its golden tone, born of a surface noticeably cooler than the Sun's, contrasts with the bluish whites that populate this region of the autumn sky. The light brushing us today set out in the early fifteenth century, when the Portuguese were beginning their first expeditions down the African coast.