Mimosa

Its story

Mimosa, the second jewel of the Southern Cross, is a blue giant whose brightness pulses ever so faintly across decades. Its light departs almost 279 years before reaching us, drifting from a southern quarter of the sky invisible to Europe and falling on the latitudes where the Cross once guided Polynesian and Portuguese navigators alike. Its modern name, borrowed from the tropical flower, was given in the twentieth century, a soft echo against its deep indigo glow.