hip-68581

Its story

Along the long spirals of Hydra shines an orange K-type giant, about 440 light-years away. Its light set out around 1586, in the early modern era, when Tycho Brahe was tuning his instruments at Uraniborg to measure the sky without a telescope. Cooler than the Sun yet far more luminous, its swollen surface radiates a gilded glow, old and unhurried.