hip-49569

Its story

Along the long curves of Hydra, largest of constellations, burns this orange K-type giant. Its light crossed three hundred eighty-two years to reach us, departing around 1644, in the midst of the Thirty Years' War —the same year Descartes published his Principles of Philosophy in Amsterdam. Cooler and far larger than the Sun, it flows with the amber calm of aged stars, drifting unhurried along the back of the celestial serpent.