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Its story

At 1,310 light-years inside Vela —the ancient keel of the Argo Navis—, an orange giant lets its outsized brilliance drift across space. It is a K-class luminous star, tens of times more lavish than the Sun. The photon entering a telescope tonight departed when Charlemagne was being crowned emperor and Europe had barely begun to redraw itself. An entire medieval age fits within that crossing.