hip-21139

Its story

45 Eridani is a distant orange giant, 656 light-years away, set along the long meander of the celestial River Eridanus as it drifts toward the southern sky. K-type, it radiates a coppery glow, the kind worn by suns that have already swollen their atmospheres. Its light crossed the entire Middle Ages to arrive punctually at our night, unwitnessed until an eighteenth-century astronomer pinned it on his chart.