hip-72208

Its story

In Boötes, the celestial herdsman who seems to drive Ursa Major forever onward, pulses a red variable M-type giant some 807 light-years away. Its light set out when the Christian kingdoms were advancing the Iberian Reconquest and the mendicant orders were walking the roads of Europe. Far cooler than the Sun, it slowly oscillates in brightness —a coppery ember the herdsman carries as a lantern through the darkness of the firmament.