Mahasim

Its story

Mahasim, white and slightly variable, shines at 165 light-years from the Earth in the constellation of Auriga, the Charioteer. Its Arabic name refers to the wrist of the driver firmly holding the reins, one of those words that survived the translation of Ptolemy's Almagest in twelfth-century Toledo, when the Castilian kings still funded the translators of every available manuscript. Its light fluctuates very faintly, almost like a distant heartbeat, in slow cycles that barely alter what the human eye can perceive from any ordinary courtyard floor.