Bet

Its story

Beta Horologii is a white A-type star in the small constellation of the Clock, sketched by Lacaille in the eighteenth century from his South African observatory. Some 295 light-years away, its crisp, cool light stands out in a quiet southern region far from the luminous bustle of the Milky Way. There the French abbé christened scientific instruments instead of mythological figures; the Clock, the Keel, the Microscope, the Telescope: this sober white sun shines, then, over a firmament of measuring tools encoded in Enlightenment script.