The story is well spun, no doubt! I first encountered it in the 1990s — some reposted USENET content (iirc), in one form or another, while I was at university.

The story is well spun, no doubt! I first encountered it in the 1990s — some reposted USENET content (iirc), in one form or another, while I was at university. Then, and now, I thought an interesting retelling could involve the protagonists discovering a civilization (Type II+) that had learned to tap the energy of their star and (eventually) inadvertently triggered a supernova, though that fate took some time to unfold and so various laments were left behind on their planet's surface. Upon realization of the above, the principal protagonist (Jesuit priest) recollects about his crews' wonderment that one civilization's end could, across light years, so precisely signal monumental changes in another. Unanswered questions are raised as to Redemption and Doom. The story ends with the principal protagonist having made a 30-year Ignatian retreat and marveling that, among all the myriad unanswered questions, Earth wheat and grapes were immediately cultivable in the alien soil, such that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was able to be offered uninterruptedly from the day they arrived to the present.