Sig

Its story

Sigma Persei is an orange giant glowing on the flank of the hero Perseus, some three hundred and sixty light-years away from us. Its warm tone contrasts with the brilliant white and bluish stars that dominate the rest of the constellation, an elegant reminder that the sky is built from very different stellar generations. The light we now see set out when the Inquisition was still interrogating Galileo in Rome and modern astronomy was barely emerging from the newly invented telescope.