hip-59384

Its story

In the high latitudes of the Giraffe, very close to the celestial north pole, burns an orange K-class giant whose tepid light has travelled about eleven hundred years before reaching us. When it left that surface, Irish monks were copying manuscripts by candlelight and the Vikings were preparing their first raids along the European coasts. Its almost polar position turns it into a discreet, permanent beacon of the northern hemisphere, fixed around the sky's axis.