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Its story

5 Puppis is an F-type star only 93 light-years away, almost a cosmic neighbour. It inhabits Puppis, the Stern of the ancient ship Argo Navis that eighteenth-century astronomers split into three modern constellations. Its glow, comparable to a nearby candle in the oceanic vastness of the southern sky, reaches us tonight as light that left the star shortly after Charlie Chaplin's first film premiered.