hip-29263

Its story

At 851 light years in the Dove, this red M-type star with a variable nature burns at magnitude 5.54. Its light set out when the Kingdom of Castile was still shaping its frontier with al-Andalus, around the mid-twelfth century. M stars are the coolest and most numerous in the cosmos, and many of them, when they vary, do so because their outer layers contract and expand in slow cycles, tracing a heartbeat visible to patient astronomers.