hip-111660

Its story

In Cepheus, the king chained to the celestial north pole, shines a red M-type giant, far cooler than the Sun yet immensely more luminous because of its size. Its light took roughly 699 years to cross the void: it set out around 1326, when European Christendom was raising the great Gothic cathedrals and the plague was still gathering in silence. That deep red traces the crown of the celestial monarch.