Alkes

Its story

Alkes, 'the cup' in Arabic, gives its name to Crater, a small and discreet constellation that Greek myth links to the cup of Apollo, carried up to the sky by a disobedient raven along with a serpent. It is a K-type orange giant about 159 light-years away, an old star that has burnt through the hydrogen in its core and swollen into a dilated, ruddy atmosphere. Its warm light reaches tonight from 1867, the year Marie Curie was born.