hip-26219

Its story

In Columba glows an orange K-type giant, cooler than the Sun yet swollen by age. Its light has been traveling for more than three centuries: it set out when Vivaldi was composing the Four Seasons in Venice and Baroque music was beginning to mark the cadences of the Ancien Régime. The constellation is young on maps, drawn in the sixteenth century to honor the dove of the ark, and under its calm silhouette this star burns with the warm light of one who has seen too much to hurry.