hip-79050

Its story

In the venomous tail of Scorpius shines a red type M star, cool and veteran, far larger than the Sun yet of muted fire. Its light took roughly 479 years to cross the void: it set out when Magellan was preparing his circumnavigation and Luther was nailing his theses in Wittenberg. Each southern night it appears as a serene ember among the younger blue stars of the sting —a warm relic of a century that reinvented the world.