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Its story

A red M-type giant burns slowly within the modest constellation of Canis Minor, much cooler than the Sun yet immensely larger, its outer layers swelling like a quiet ember. Its light began travelling some five centuries ago, when Leonardo da Vinci was filling his notebooks with sketches of birds, water and machines never built. After 543 light-years, that warm red glow arrives tonight as the slow signature of a star nearing the long evening of its life.