hip-47310

Its story

The serpent of Hydra winds across the southern sky, and this orange star glows among its coils — cool and patient as the embers of dawn. Its light took some 296 years to reach us, leaving when Linnaeus was ordering nature into kingdoms and genera, never suspecting the cosmos would overflow all his tables. Wider than our Sun and slowed in cadence, K-type stars like this mark that elegant hour when a sun has left its noon and tilts, unhurried, toward its evening.