Eta-2

Its story

Eta-2 Fornacis is an orange K-type giant about 450 light-years away, set in the Furnace, another of the small southern constellations with which Lacaille filled the sky of the Cape in the eighteenth century. Its cool, coppery light is barely visible to the unaided eye in city skies, but at the telescope it reveals the characteristic red of stars that have moved past core hydrogen fusion. It shines in a modest region of the sky, where amateurs find remote galaxies peering out between stars like this one.