hip-15643

Its story

Along the long course of the river Eridanus flows a yellow G-type star, mild sister of our Sun. Its light departed three hundred and sixty-seven years ago, when Christiaan Huygens built the first pendulum clock and split time into exact seconds. Of warm, familiar glow, it looks like a household fire hung from the celestial current. To see it is to remember that in that century humankind, at last, learned to measure itself.