Zet

Its story

Zeta Pictoris is an F-type subgiant 117 light-years away, in the small southern constellation of the Painter's Easel, drawn by Lacaille in the eighteenth century. With 1.49 solar masses and 2.3 solar radii, after 2.6 billion years it has begun to leave the main sequence. It shines almost eight times brighter than the Sun and approaches us at 44 km/s — a star caught in its evolutionary hinge, no longer fully young yet not yet a giant.