hip-114341

Its story

88 Aquarii is an orange giant in Aquarius, swollen to roughly twenty-eight times the Sun's radius and luminous enough that its glow travels close to 271 years before reaching us. Its atmosphere burns cooler than the Sun's —near 4,500 kelvin— which is why it vibrates with that amber hue worn by stars long past their youth. When this flicker left its surface, the eighteenth century on Earth was nearing its close.