Polaris

Its story

Polaris appears motionless while the entire firmament wheels around it: it sits less than a degree from the northern celestial pole, which made it the silent guide of Phoenician, Viking and Portuguese navigators for centuries. Its yellow-white light takes 432 years to reach us —it set out around the time Galileo first turned his telescope skyward. And though it seems unwavering, it is in fact a Cepheid variable: a beacon that pulses with a rhythm too subtle for the human eye.