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Its story

In Cassiopeia, that eternal W presiding over northern skies, shines an orange giant whose light slipped free sixteen hundred years ago. It set out as the Visigoths crossed the Rhine and the Roman Empire fractured in the west. Despite a surface cooler than the Sun’s, it is enormously luminous, a peaceful bonfire whose copper hue betrays its mature age. Distance reduces it to a whisper for the unaided eye; under binoculars, it regains the serene presence of stars that have already lived a great deal.