hip-25769

Its story

17 Camelopardalis is a cool rarity: an M-type red giant 940 light-years away, set within the stellar desert of the Giraffe, the circumpolar constellation barely mentioned in ancient lore for its lack of bright stars. Its reddish tint, perceptible even through binoculars under dark skies, betrays the calm ending of a star that has spent its hydrogen. Its light departed around the eleventh century, when Europe was raising its first Romanesque cathedrals.