hip-16339

Its story

Horologium is the pendulum clock that Lacaille traced in the 18th century while mapping the southern sky, a modern and sparsely populated constellation. There shines this white A-type variable, whose brightness shifts to a rhythm still catalogued by modern photometric networks. Its light left the star around 1633, when Galileo was being condemned by the Inquisition for defending the heliocentric system.