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Its story

It beats in Puppis with an orange glow that wavers gently, like a distant beacon breathing through the southern midnight. Its light set out some 1,700 years ago, when the late Roman Empire endured the Gothic invasions and Constantinople was barely settling in as the eastern capital. A K-type giant, cooler than the Sun yet far larger, swollen in a quiet old age. Its variability is an ancient pulse —an intimate tide that crosses all that distance only to arrive here in silence.