hip-7999

Its story

Far in the constellation Cetus —the cosmic whale— lives an orange K-type giant, an aged and luminous star swollen well beyond the Sun. Its light set out around 1,190 years ago, when Charlemagne had just been crowned emperor and illuminated manuscripts glowed in the scriptoria of the early Carolingian renaissance. That same medieval light still crosses the night sky with the calm of a deep-sea creature.