hip-73493

Its story

In Centaurus, where the south first peers out for the European observer, glows an orange K-type star. Its light crossed 390 years: it set off in 1635, as the French were founding Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean and tracing the first routes of an island empire. Cooler than the Sun, it pulses beside the body of the mythical centaur, among clusters barely visible to the naked eye.