hip-51140

Its story

In Vela —another fragment of the ancient ship Argo— burns an orange K-type star, particularly luminous, one of those forges that illuminate entire kiloparsecs. Its light has been on the road for over two thousand years: it set out when the Roman Empire had barely settled around Augustus and Hispania was a newly pacified province. Far vaster than the Sun, it appears small in our sky only because of the immense distance. An ancient flame, contemporary with the first emperors.