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Its story

In the constellation Vela, a modern fragment of the ancient Argo, shines this orange K-type giant five hundred seventy-seven light years away. Its light began its journey around the fifteenth century, when the Catholic Monarchs were signing the Capitulations of Santa Fe in Granada in 1492, and a voyage was being born that would open a new oceanic era. Colder and far larger than the Sun, it offers its amber glow to southern observers as a stable feature of the austral celestial landscape.