Zet

Its story

Zeta Pyxidis shines in the small Compass Box, a modern constellation cut out in the eighteenth century by Lacaille in the heart of the old remains of the ship Argo. It is a yellow G-type giant some 244 light-years away, an older sibling of the Sun with several thousand times its approximate volume. Its soft, warm light crosses a region of the sky rarely celebrated yet essential for anyone learning to navigate below the celestial equator, where the Milky Way changes its tone.