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Its story

In the small southern constellation of Apus, the Bird of Paradise, lives a red type-M star 884 light-years away whose light departed in the heart of the Middle Ages, when Christian kingdoms were pushing south down the Iberian peninsula. It is a cool giant —barely three thousand degrees at its surface— but swollen and deeply red, an ancient ember pulsing with a slow, variable rhythm. Its crimson tone is that of the final glow of a fire refusing to wholly die.