Menkar

Its story

Menkar, Arabic for «the nose», locates the head of Cetus, the sea monster that in Greek myth nearly devours Andromeda chained to the rock. It is a variable red giant 249 light-years from the Earth, its cool glow drifting slowly in brightness without any casual observer ever noticing the change with the unaided eye. To the Greeks of antiquity it marked where the safe waters of the Mediterranean ended and the outer reaches of the deep sea began, that territory from which the ships venturing too far almost never came back.