Eta

Its story

Eta Mensae is set within the Table, that singular constellation Lacaille named after Cape Town's Table Mountain, from which he catalogued nearly ten thousand southern stars. An orange type K giant some 668 light-years away, it shines in a region neighbouring the Large Magellanic Cloud, which places it in one of the most evocative corners of the southern sky. Mensa is the only constellation that takes its name from a terrestrial geographic feature.