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Its story

Along the channel of Eridanus drifts this orange K-type giant, whose light has spent more than seven hundred and sixty years crossing the void. It set out around 1265, when Thomas Aquinas was writing his Summa Theologiae and Marco Polo had not yet departed for Cathay. Cooler than the Sun, its coppery tone suggests old embers and endless sunsets. It reaches us as an orange echo of the Middle Ages, kindled in the longest river of the southern sky.