hip-39177

Its story

3 Cancri glows orange within the modest constellation of the Crab, the faint zodiacal outline that hosts the Beehive Cluster. It is a K-type giant, far cooler and more swollen than the Sun, with the coppery light typical of evolved stars. It is distant —nearly 794 light-years— so the light tracing it tonight departed in the thirteenth century, while Marco Polo was still travelling the silk roads toward Cathay.