Nekkar

Its story

Nekkar is a yellow giant 225 light-years from the Earth, set discreetly at the head of Boötes, just above bright Arcturus. Its name, derived from the Arabic «al-baqqar», simply means «the herdsman», placing in the firmament the everyday figure of the peasant ploughing the land from dawn at the slow pace dictated by his oxen. Its golden light now reaches Europe from a time when the thinkers of the Enlightenment were barely beginning to draft their first encyclopaedias and to dream of a knowledge made accessible to any reader.