hip-31165

Its story

In the small southern constellation of Columba glows a yellow star, a spectral sister to the Sun but older and more luminous. Its light set out more than two hundred and seventy years ago, when the French encyclopaedists were weaving the first great inventory of human knowledge and cabinets of curiosities filled up with minerals and maps. Its warm glow recalls a time when reason was beginning to light up the salons of Europe with the same steadiness this star has burned for millennia.