Pavo is a

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the earliest constellation ...

in the southern sky whose name is

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

for "

peacock Peafowl is a common name for three bird species in the genera '' Pavo'' and '' Afropavo'' within the tribe Pavonini of the family Phasianidae, the pheasants and their allies. Male peafowl are referred to as peacocks, and female peafowl are r ...

". Pavo first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in 1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius and

Jodocus Hondius Jodocus Hondius (Latinized version of his Dutch name: ''Joost de Hondt'') (17 October 1563 – 12 February 1612) was a Flemish and Dutch engraver and cartographer. He is sometimes called Jodocus Hondius the Elder to distinguish him from hi ...

and was depicted in

Johann Bayer Johann Bayer (1572 – 7 March 1625) was a German lawyer and uranographer (celestial cartographer). He was born in Rain, Lower Bavaria, in 1572. At twenty, in 1592 he began his study of philosophy and law at the University of Ingolstadt, ...

's star atlas '' Uranometria'' of 1603, and was likely conceived by

Petrus Plancius Petrus Plancius (; 1552 – 15 May 1622) was a Dutch-Flemish astronomer, cartographer and clergyman. He was born as Pieter Platevoet in Dranouter, now in Heuvelland, West Flanders. He studied theology in Germany and England. At the age of 24 he ...

from the observations of

Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser (occasionally Petrus Theodorus; – 11 September 1596) was a Dutch navigator and celestial cartographer who mapped several constellations on the southern celestial hemisphere. Voyages and star observation Little i ...

and

Frederick de Houtman Frederick de Houtman ( – 21 October 1627) was a Dutch explorer, navigator, and colonial governor who sailed on the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies from 1595 until 1597, during which time he made observations of the southern ce ...

. French explorer and astronomer

Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille Abbé Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille (; 15 March 171321 March 1762), formerly sometimes spelled de la Caille, was a French astronomer and geodesist who named 14 out of the 88 constellations. From 1750 to 1754, he studied the sky at the Cape of Good ...

gave its stars

Bayer designation A Bayer designation is a stellar designation in which a specific star is identified by a Greek or Latin letter followed by the genitive form of its parent constellation's Latin name. The original list of Bayer designations contained 1,564 stars ...

s 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 A binary star is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved using a telescope as separate stars, in w ...

. Delta Pavonis is a nearby Sun-like star some 19.9

light-year A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distance, astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 Orders of magnitude (numbers)#1012, trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 ...

s distant. Six of the

star system A star system or stellar system is a small number of stars that orbit each other, bound by gravitational attraction. A large group of stars bound by gravitation is generally called a '' star cluster'' or ''galaxy'', although, broadly speaking ...

s in Pavo have been found to host planets, including HD 181433 with a

super-earth A super-Earth is an extrasolar planet with a mass higher than Earth's, but substantially below those of the Solar System's ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, which are 14.5 and 17 times Earth's, respectively. The term "super-Earth" refers only to ...

, and HD 172555 with evidence of a major interplanetary collision in the past few thousand years. The constellation contains

NGC 6752 NGC 6752 (also known as Caldwell 93 and nicknamed the Great Peacock Globular) is a globular cluster in the constellation Pavo. It is the fourth-brightest globular cluster in the sky, after Omega Centauri, 47 Tucanae and Messier 22, respective ...

, the third-brightest globular cluster in the sky, and the

spiral galaxy Spiral galaxies form a class of galaxy originally described by Edwin Hubble in his 1936 work ''The Realm of the Nebulae''NGC 6744, which closely resembles the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. ...

but is twice as large. Pavo displays an annual

meteor shower A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extr ...

known as the Delta Pavonids, whose

radiant Radiant may refer to: Computers, software, and video games * Radiant (software), a content management system * GtkRadiant, a level editor created by id Software for their games * Radiant AI, a technology developed by Bethesda Softworks for '' ...

is near the star δ Pav.

History and mythology

History of the modern constellation

Johann Bayer - Uraniometria - Southern Birds

Pavo was one of the twelve constellations established by

from the observations of the southern sky by explorers

and

, who had sailed on the first Dutch trading expedition, known as the '' Eerste Schipvaart'', to the

East Indies The East Indies (or simply the Indies), is a term used in historical narratives of the Age of Discovery. The Indies refers to various lands in the East or the Eastern hemisphere, particularly the islands and mainlands found in and around ...

. It first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in 1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius with

. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in German cartographer

'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".

The peacock in Greek mythology

According to Mark Chartrand, former executive director of the

National Space Institute The National Space Institute was a space advocacy group, the first of its kind, established by Dr. Wernher von Braun to help maintain the public's support for the United States space program. It has since merged, in 1987, with the L5 Society ...

, 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 r 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 dthe 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 Zeus or , , ; grc, Δῐός, ''Diós'', label= genitive Boeotian Aeolic and Laconian grc-dor, Δεύς, Deús ; grc, Δέος, ''Déos'', label= genitive el, Δίας, ''Días'' () is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek relig ...

(Jupiter). Zeus changed Io into a heifer to deceive his wife (and sister)

Hera In ancient Greek religion, Hera (; grc-gre, Ἥρα, Hḗrā; grc, Ἥρη, Hḗrē, label=none in Ionic and Homeric Greek) is the goddess of marriage, women and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology, she ...

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 Argus or Argos Panoptes ( grc, Ἄργος Πανόπτης, All-seeing Argos) is a many-eyed giant in Greek mythology. Mythology Argus Panoptes (), guardian of the heifer-nymph Io and son of Arestor and probably Mycene (in other version so ...

, a creature with one hundred eyes, to guard the now-pregnant Io from Zeus. Meanwhile, Zeus entreated

Hermes Hermes (; grc-gre, Ἑρμῆς) is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Hermes is considered the herald of the gods. He is also considered the protector of human heralds, travellers, thieves, merchants, and orat ...

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 Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom ...

's ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his '' magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the ...

'', 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 eraretrieved those eyes to set in place among the feathers of her bird he peacock, Pavoand filled his tail with starry jewels."'' Johan Doppelmayr's celestial chart of Pavo and Indus

Johan Doppelmayr's celestial chart of Pavo and Indus

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 Blue Peacock, renamed from Blue Bunny and originally Brown Bunny, was a British tactical nuclear weapon project in the 1950s. The project's goal was to store a number of ten-kiloton nuclear land mines in Germany. These mines which were intende ...

known to the ancient Greeks.

Equivalents in other cultures

The

Wardaman people The Wardaman people are a small group of Aboriginal Australians living about South-West of Katherine, on Menngen Aboriginal Land Trust in the Northern Territory of Australia. Language Wardaman is a non Pama-Nyungan language. Though close t ...

of the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Aust ...

in Australia saw the stars of Pavo and the neighbouring constellation

Ara ARA may refer to: Media and the arts * American-Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences * '' Artistička Radna Akcija'', compilation album released in former Yugoslavia * Associate of the Royal Academy, denoting membership in the British Royal Acad ...

as flying foxes.

Characteristics

Pavo is bordered by Telescopium to the north,

Apus Apus is a small constellation in the southern sky. It represents a bird-of-paradise, and its name means "without feet" in Greek because the bird-of-paradise was once wrongly believed to lack feet. First depicted on a celestial globe by Pet ...

and Ara to the west, Octans to the south, and

Indus The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in Western Tibet, flows northwest through the disputed region of Kashmir, ...

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 The International Astronomical Union (IAU; french: link=yes, Union astronomique internationale, UAI) is a nongovernmental organisation with the objective of advancing astronomy in all aspects, including promoting astronomical research, outreac ...

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 Right ascension (abbreviated RA; symbol ) is the angular distance of a particular point measured eastward along the celestial equator from the Sun at the March equinox to the ( hour circle of the) point in question above the earth. When pair ...

coordinates of these borders lie between and , while the

declination In astronomy, declination (abbreviated dec; symbol ''δ'') is one of the two angles that locate a point on the celestial sphere in the equatorial coordinate system, the other being hour angle. Declination's angle is measured north or south of th ...

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 The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the Equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined as being in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the solar system as Earth's Nort ...

, and is circumpolar at latitudes south of the 50th parallel in the Southern Hemisphere.

Features

Stars

Although he depicted Pavo on his chart, Bayer did not assign its stars

s. French explorer and astronomer

labelled them Alpha to Omega in 1756, but omitted Psi and Xi, and labelled two pairs of stars close together Mu and Phi Pavonis. In 1879, American astronomer Benjamin Gould designated a star Xi Pavonis as he felt its brightness warranted a name, but dropped Chi Pavonis due to its faintness. Lying near the constellation's northern border with Telescopium is Alpha Pavonis, the brightest star in Pavo. Its proper name — Peacock — is an English translation of the constellation's name. It was assigned by the British

Her Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office His Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office (HMNAO), now part of the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, was established in 1832 on the site of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (ROG), where ''The Nautical Almanac'' had been published since 1767. HMNAO ...

in the late 1930s; the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...

insisted that all bright stars must have names, the star hitherto having lacked a proper name. Alpha has an apparent (or visual) magnitude of 1.91 and

spectral type In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their spectral characteristics. Electromagnetic radiation from the star is analyzed by splitting it with a prism or diffraction grating into a spectrum exhibiting the ...

B2IV. It is a

system, one estimate placing the distance between the pair of stars as 0.21

astronomical unit The astronomical unit (symbol: au, or or AU) is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun and approximately equal to or 8.3 light-minutes. The actual distance from Earth to the Sun varies by about 3% as Earth orbits ...

s (AU), or half the distance between Mercury and the Sun. The two stars rotate around each other in a mere 11 days and 18 hours. The

is located around 180 light years away from Earth. With an apparent magnitude of 3.43, Beta Pavonis is the second-brightest star in the constellation. A white giant of spectral class A7III, it is an aging star that has used up the hydrogen fuel at its core and has expanded and cooled after moving off the

main sequence In astronomy, the main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appears on plots of stellar color versus brightness. These color-magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar He ...

. It lies 135 light years away from the

Solar System The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...

. Lying a few degrees west of Beta is Delta Pavonis, a nearby Sun-like but more

evolved Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variati ...

star; this is a yellow subgiant of spectral type G8IV and apparent magnitude 3.56 that is only 19.9 light years distant from Earth. East of Beta and at the constellation's eastern border with Indus is Gamma Pavonis, a fainter, solar-type star 30 light years from Earth with a magnitude of 4.22 and stellar class F9V. Other nearby stars in Pavo are much fainter: SCR 1845-6357 (the nearest star in Pavo) is a binary system with an apparent magnitude of 17.4 consisting of a

red dwarf ''Red Dwarf'' is a British science fiction comedy franchise created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, which primarily consists of a television sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999, and on Dave since 2009, gaining a cult following. ...

and

brown dwarf Brown dwarfs (also called failed stars) are substellar objects that are not massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion of ordinary hydrogen ( 1H) into helium in their cores, unlike a main-sequence star. Instead, they have a mass between the most ...

companion lying around 12.6 light years distant, while Gliese 693 is a red dwarf of magnitude 10.78 lying 19 light years away. Pavo contains several variable stars of note. Lambda Pavonis is a bright

irregular variable An irregular variable is a type of variable star in which variations in brightness show no regular periodicity. There are two main sub-types of irregular variable: eruptive and pulsating. Eruptive irregular variables are divided into three catego ...

ranging between magnitudes 3.4 and 4.4; this variation can be observed with the unaided eye. Classed as a Gamma Cassiopeiae variable or

shell star A shell star is a star having a spectrum that shows extremely broad absorption lines, plus some very narrow absorption lines. They typically also show some emission lines, usually from the Balmer series but occasionally of other lines. The broa ...

, it is of spectral type B2II-IIIe and lies around 1430 light years distant from Earth. Kappa Pavonis is a

W Virginis variable W Virginis variables are a subclass of Type II Cepheids which exhibit pulsation periods between 10–20 days,Wallerstein, G."The Cepheids of Population II and Related Stars" ''Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific'', 114 p.689–6 ...

—a subclass of Type II Cepheid. It ranges from magnitude 3.91 to 4.78 over 9 days and is a yellow-white supergiant pulsating between spectral classes F5I-II and G5I-II. NU and V Pavonis are pulsating semiregular variable

red giant A red giant is a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass (roughly 0.3–8 solar masses ()) in a late phase of stellar evolution. The outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous, making the radius large and the surface temperature around o ...

stars. NU has a spectral type M6III and ranges from magnitude 4.9 to 5.3, while V Pavonis ranges from magnitude 6.3 to 8.2 over two periods of 225.4 and 3735 days concurrently. V is a

carbon star A carbon star (C-type star) is typically an asymptotic giant branch star, a luminous red giant, whose atmosphere contains more carbon than oxygen. The two elements combine in the upper layers of the star, forming carbon monoxide, which consumes mo ...

C6 is equivalent to a class M2–M3 star, the 4 shows the strength of the Swan bands on a scale of 1 (weak) to 5 (strong), and the Nb indicates bands of the chemical element

niobium Niobium is a chemical element with chemical symbol Nb (formerly columbium, Cb) and atomic number 41. It is a light grey, crystalline, and ductile transition metal. Pure niobium has a Mohs hardness rating similar to pure titanium, and it has s ...

. See:
of spectral type C6,4(Nb) with a prominent red hue. Located in the west of the constellation and depicting the peacock's tail are

Eta Eta (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἦτα ''ē̂ta'' or ell, ήτα ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative in most dialects, ...

and

Xi Pavonis ξ Pavonis, Latinised as Xi Pavonis, is a triple star system in the southern constellation of Pavo. It is visible to the naked eye as a faint star with a combined apparent visual magnitude of 4.35 The system is located approximately ...

. At apparent magnitude 3.6, Eta is a luminous orange giant of spectral type K2II some 350 light years distant from Earth. Xi Pavonis is a multiple star system visible in small telescopes as a brighter orange star and fainter white companion. Located around 470 light years from Earth, the system has a magnitude of 4.38. AR Pavonis is a faint but well-studied

eclipsing binary A binary star is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved using a telescope as separate stars, in ...

composed of a red giant and smaller hotter star some 18000 light years from Earth. It has some features of a

cataclysmic variable In astronomy, cataclysmic variable stars (CVs) are stars which irregularly increase in brightness by a large factor, then drop back down to a quiescent state. They were initially called novae (), since ones with an outburst brightness visible to ...

, the smaller component most likely having an

accretion disc An accretion disk is a structure (often a circumstellar disk) formed by diffuse material in orbital motion around a massive central body. The central body is typically a star. Friction, uneven irradiance, magnetohydrodynamic effects, and other ...

. The visual magnitude ranges from 7.4 to 13.6 over 605 days.

Solar Twin

In November 2018, the 8th magnitude star, HD 186302 became the second star identified to be a solar sibling, this one being particularly sun like, same spectra G2, virtually the same mass as well, with a twin spectra revealing identical metallicity. The first star identified as a solar sibling in May 2014, HD 162826, within Hercules is an F type main sequence star somewhat more powerful than the Sun, with a mass 15% greater.

Planetary systems and debris disks

Six stars with

planetary systems A planetary system is a set of gravitationally bound non- stellar objects in or out of orbit around a star or star system. Generally speaking, systems with one or more planets constitute a planetary system, although such systems may also consi ...

have been found. Three planets have been discovered in the system of the orange star HD 181433, an inner super-earth with an orbital period of 9.4 days and two outer gas giants with periods of 2.6 and 6 years respectively. HD 196050 and HD 175167 are yellow G-class Sun-like stars, while HD 190984 is an F-class main sequence star slightly larger and hotter than the Sun; all three are accompanied by a gas giant companion. HD 172555 is a young white A-type main sequence star, two planets of which appear to have had a major collision in the past few thousand years. Spectrographic evidence of large amounts of

silicon dioxide Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula , most commonly found in nature as quartz and in various living organisms. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is one ...

gas indicates the smaller of the two, which had been at least the size of Earth's moon, was destroyed, and the larger, which was at least the size of Mercury, was severely damaged. Evidence of the collision was detected by NASA's

Spitzer Space Telescope The Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), was an infrared space telescope launched in 2003. Operations ended on 30 January 2020. Spitzer was the third space telescope dedicated to infrared astronomy, ...

. In the south of the constellation, Epsilon Pavonis is a 3.95-magnitude white main sequence star of spectral type A0Va located around 105 light years distant from Earth. It appears to be surrounded by a narrow ring of dust at a distance of 107 AU.

Deep-sky objects

The

deep-sky object A deep-sky object (DSO) is any astronomical object that is not an individual star or Solar System object (such as Sun, Moon, planet, comet, etc.). The classification is used for the most part by amateur astronomers to denote visually observed fa ...

s in Pavo include

, the third-brightest globular cluster in the sky, after

47 Tucanae 47 Tucanae, or 47 Tuc (also designated NGC 104) is a globular cluster located in the constellation Tucana. It is about away from Earth, and 120 light years in diameter. 47 Tuc can be seen with the naked eye, with an apparent magnitude of 4.1. ...

and Omega Centauri. An estimated 100 light years across, it is thought to contain 100,000 stars. Barely visible behind the cluster is a dwarf spheroidal galaxy known as Bedin I. Lying three degrees to the south is NGC 6744, a

spiral galaxy Spiral galaxies form a class of galaxy originally described by Edwin Hubble in his 1936 work ''The Realm of the Nebulae''Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. ...

, but is twice its diameter. A type 1c supernova was discovered in the galaxy in 2005; known as SN2005at, it peaked at magnitude 16.8. The dwarf galaxy IC 4662 lies 10

arcminutes A minute of arc, arcminute (arcmin), arc minute, or minute arc, denoted by the symbol , is a unit of angular measurement equal to of one degree. Since one degree is of a turn (or complete rotation), one minute of arc is of a turn. The n ...

northeast of Eta Pavonis, and is of magnitude 11.62. Located only 8 million light years away, it has several regions of high star formation. The 14th-magnitude galaxy IC 4965 lies 1.7 degrees west of Alpha Pavonis, and is a central member of the

Shapley Supercluster The Shapley Supercluster or Shapley Concentration (SCl 124) is the largest concentration of galaxies in our nearby universe that forms a gravitationally interacting unit, thereby pulling itself together instead of expanding with the universe. It a ...

. The galactic wind bearing NGC 6810 and the interacting

NGC 6872 NGC 6872, also known as the Condor Galaxy, is a large barred spiral galaxy of type ' in the constellation Pavo. It is from Earth and is approximately five billion years old. is interacting with the lenticular galaxy , which is less than one ...

/ IC 4970 galaxies lie 87 and 212 million light-years away from Earth respectively.

Meteor showers

Pavo is the

of two annual

meteor showers A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extr ...

: the Delta Pavonids and August Pavonids. Appearing from 21 March to 8 April and generally peaking around 5 and 6 April, Delta Pavonids are thought to be associated with Comet Grigg-Mellish. The shower was discovered by Michael Buhagiar from Perth, Australia, who observed meteors on six occasions between 1969 and 1980. The August Pavonids peak around August 31 and are thought to be associated with the Halley-type Comet Levy (P/1991 L3).

Notes

References

Sources

External links

The clickable Pavo
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pavo (Constellation) Constellations listed by Petrus Plancius Southern constellations Constellations