hip-92202

Its story

In the tiny constellation of Scutum, the shield raised by Hevelius in the seventeenth century, pulses an orange K-type star whose light wavers gently. Its distance is staggering: around 326,000 light-years — figures more typical of the galactic halo — meaning its brilliance set out long before any modern hominid had set foot in Europe. It is an almost prehistoric whisper, reaching us dressed in amber.