hip-48748

Its story

In Antlia, a modern constellation honouring the invention that drew air out of a glass bell, shines an orange star of K type. Its light set out more than five hundred years ago, in the heart of the Renaissance, when the brushes of Leonardo and Michelangelo were transforming European painting. Cooler than the Sun, it unfolds a warm, steady amber. It is a discreet point in a southern figure rarely remembered, like a forgotten ember inside a scientific instrument that had been gathering dust for generations on a celestial shelf.