Pavo is a constellation in the southern sky whose name is Latin for 'peacock'. Pavo first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in 1598 in Amsterdam by Petrus Plancius and Jodocus Hondius and was depicted in Johann Bayer's star atlas Uranometria of 1603, and was likely conceived by Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. French explorer and astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille gave its stars Bayer designations in 1756. The constellations Pavo, Grus, Phoenix and Tucana are collectively known as the "Southern Birds". The constellation's brightest member, Alpha Pavonis, is also known as Peacock and appears as a 1.91-magnitude blue-white star, but is actually a spectroscopic binary. Delta Pavonis is a nearby Sun-like star some 19.9 light-years distant. Six of the star systems in Pavo have been found to host planets, including HD 181433 with a super-Earth, and HD 172555 with evidence of a major interplanetary collision in the past few thousand years. The constellation contains NGC 6752, the fourth-brightest globular cluster in the sky, and the spiral galaxy NGC 6744, which closely resembles the Milky Way but is twice as large. Pavo displays an annual meteor shower known as the Delta Pavonids, whose radiant is near the star δ Pav.
History and mythology
Pavo was one of the twelve constellations established by Petrus Plancius from the observations of the southern sky by explorers Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman, who had sailed on the first Dutch trading expedition, known as the Eerste Schipvaart, to the East Indies. It first appeared on a 35 cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in 1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius with Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in German cartographer Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. De Houtman included it in his southern star catalogue the same year under the Dutch name De Pauww 'The Peacock'. Pavo and the nearby constellations Phoenix, Grus, and Tucana are collectively called the "Southern Birds".
Greek mythology According to Mark Chartrand, former executive director of the National Space Institute, Plancius may not have been the first to designate this group of stars as a peacock: "In Greek myth the stars that are now the Peacock were Argos [or Argus], builder of the ship Argo. He was changed by the goddess Juno into a peacock and placed in the sky along with his ship." Indeed, the peacock "symboliz[ed] the starry firmament" for the Greeks, and the goddess Hera was believed to drive through the heavens in a chariot drawn by peacocks. The peacock and the "Argus" nomenclature are also prominent in a different myth, in which Io, a beautiful princess of Argos, was lusted after by Zeus (Jupiter). Zeus changed Io into a heifer to deceive his wife (and sister) Hera and couple with her. Hera saw through Zeus's scheme and asked for the heifer as a gift. Zeus, unable to refuse such a reasonable request, reluctantly gave the heifer to Hera, who promptly banished Io and arranged for Argus Panoptes, a creature with one hundred eyes, to guard the now-pregnant Io from Zeus. Meanwhile, Zeus entreated Hermes to save Io; Hermes used music to lull Argus Panoptes to sleep, then slew him. Hera adorned the tail of a peacock—her favorite bird—with Argus's eyes in his honor. As recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses, the death of Argus Panoptes also contains an explicit celestial reference: "Argus lay dead; so many eyes, so bright quenched, and all hundred shrouded in one night. Saturnia [Hera] retrieved those eyes to set in place among the feathers of her bird [the peacock, Pavo] and filled his tail with starry jewels."
It is uncertain whether the Dutch astronomers had the Greek mythos in mind when creating Pavo but, in keeping with other constellations introduced by Plancius through Keyser and De Houtmann, the "peacock" in the new constellation likely referred to the green peacock, which the explorers would have encountered in the East Indies, rather than the blue peacock known to the ancient Greeks. Another possible inspiration for the name Pavo may be from the major financial supporter of the dutch missions, who was Reynier Pauw (Pauw means Pavo/peacock in Dutch). Despite the fact Reynier Pauw does not have any streetname nor school named after him, this fact would honor his contribution to the Dutch history in a brilliant way.
Equivalents Part of the constellation is referred to as "the Saucepan", particularly in Australia. The rather faint stars form a rough quadrangle southward of the main Peacock stars, with another pair of stars extending eastward to form a handle. It is used as a navigational tool to find southern celestial pole. The Wardaman people of the Northern Territory of Australia saw the stars of Pavo and the neighbouring constellation Ara as flying foxes. The Adnyamathanha people of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia call the Saucepan Mirarrityi, and it is used to represent their men's stories in their flag.
Characteristics Pavo is bordered by Telescopium to the north, Apus and Ara to the west, Octans to the south, and Indus to the east and northeast. Covering 378 square degrees, it ranks 44th of the 88 modern constellations in size and covers 0.916% of the night sky. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Pav". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 10 segments. In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 18h 10.4m and 21h 32.4m , while the declination coordinates are between −56.59° and −74.98°. As one of the deep southern constellations, it remains below the horizon at latitudes north of the 30th parallel in the Northern Hemisphere, and is circumpolar at latitudes south of the 50th parallel in the Southern Hemisphere.
Features
Stars
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
