hip-15305

Its story

It shines in Horologium, one of the constellations named by Lacaille in honour of the pendulum clock, an instrument then revolutionary. Its orange tone places it among the K-class stars, mature giants of gentle combustion. Its light set out some 512 years ago, when Leonardo da Vinci was painting his last works in Italy and the printing press kept multiplying books across Europe. Broader and cooler than the Sun, it quietly upholds the symbolic figure of the celestial clock, measuring the cosmos's own time in its own way.