hip-69038

Its story

In Boötes, this variable red M-type giant oscillates slowly, as if breathing: its brightness shifts from one month to the next. Its light set out around 1513, when Vasco Núñez de Balboa first sighted the Pacific from a hill on the isthmus. Under skies free of light pollution it reveals a muted reddish tone, characteristic of stars that have long left their stellar youth behind.