hip-47965

Its story

In Ursa Major, some 553 light years away, a variable red M-type giant breathes slowly, tuning its brightness in barely perceptible cycles. Its light began its journey around 1473, before Copernicus had even been born and while the American continent remained unknown to Europe. It is a star far larger than the Sun, cool at the surface yet enormous in volume, caught in that stage of life where the outer layers pulse in time with their own heart. A quiet flame within the bowl of the celestial dipper.