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Its story

In Cepheus, beside the slow circle of the celestial north pole, shines an orange giant whose light has been traveling for more than four centuries. It set out when Jesuit astronomers were mapping the skies of China and Tycho Brahe was tuning at Hven the most precise instruments before the telescope. It is K-type, cooler than the Sun yet far larger, and its almost polar position makes it one of those serene embers that barely move across the sky, fixed like a nocturnal guide above the rooftops of the northern hemisphere.