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Its story

Unnamed in Columba, a southern constellation devised in the seventeenth century to honour the biblical dove of the ark, this white star has been sending its light for 271 years. It set off in 1755, the year of the catastrophic Lisbon earthquake. Hotter than the Sun, it is a discreet A-type rarely cited in textbooks, yet it adds its faint whiteness to a small constellation sailed by travellers of the southern hemisphere.