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Its story

In Apus, the bird of paradise flying near the celestial south pole, shines a blue B-type star, far hotter and more massive than the Sun, a brief and powerful flame. Its light needs close to 421 years to cross the void: what we receive today departed about 1605, when Cervantes was publishing in Madrid the first part of Don Quixote and giving birth to the modern novel. Apus was charted by Dutch navigators as they first crossed the southern seas.