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Pictor
Pictor is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere, located between the star Canopus and the Large Magellanic Cloud. Its name is Latin for Painting, painter, and is an abbreviation of the older name Equuleus Pictoris (the "painter's easel"). Normally represented as an easel, Pictor was named by Abbé Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. The constellation's brightest star is Alpha Pictoris, a A-type main-sequence star, white main-sequence star around 97 light-years away from Earth. Pictor also hosts RR Pictoris, a cataclysmic variable star system that flared up as a nova, reaching apparent magnitude, apparent (visual) magnitude 1.2 in 1925 before fading into obscurity. Pictor has attracted attention because of its second-brightest star Beta Pictoris, 63.4 light-years distant from Earth, which is surrounded by an unusual dust disk rich in carbon, as well as an exoplanet (extrasolar planet). Another five stars in the constellation have been observed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beta Pictoris
Beta Pictoris (abbreviated β Pictoris or β Pic) is the second brightest star in the constellation Pictor. It is located from the Solar System, and is 1.75 times as massive and 8.7 times as luminous as the Sun. The Beta Pictoris system is very young, only 20 to 26 million years old, although it is already in the main sequence stage of its evolution. Beta Pictoris is the title member of the Beta Pictoris moving group, an association of young stars which share the same motion through space and have the same age. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has confirmed the presence of two planets, Beta Pictoris b, and Beta Pictoris c, through the use of direct imagery. Both planets are orbiting in the plane of the debris disk surrounding the star. Beta Pictoris c is currently the closest extrasolar planet to its star ever photographed: the observed separation is roughly the same as the distance between the asteroid belt and the Sun. Beta Pictoris shows an excess of in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RR Pictoris
RR Pictoris, also known as Nova Pictoris 1925, is a cataclysmic variable star system that flared up as a nova that lit up in the constellation Pictor in 1925. It was discovered by South African amateur astronomer R. Watson who lived in Beaufort West. At 05:50 AM on 25 May 1925, Mr. Watson was walking to work and noticed a star that he did not recognize in line with the stars α Crucis and β Carinae. He consulted his copy of Norton's Star Atlas, and realized that the unfamiliar star was a nova. Fortuitously, Mr. Watson was employed as a telegraph operator, and he promptly sent a telegram describing his discovery to the Royal Observatory at Cape Town. This quick reporting of the event allowed southern observatories to obtain spectra of the nova before it had reached maximum brightness. At the time of its discovery, RR Pictoris had an apparent magnitude of 2.3. It continued to brighten to magnitude 1.2, which it reached on 9 June 1925. It dimmed to magnitude 4 by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alpha Pictoris
Alpha Pictoris (α Pic, α Pictoris) is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Pictor. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 3.27, which is bright enough to be Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, viewed from urban areas in the southern hemisphere. This star is close enough for its distance to be measured using parallax shifts, which yields a value of roughly from the Sun, with a 5% margin of error. Alpha Pictoris has the distinction of being the south pole star of the planet Mercury (planet), Mercury. Properties With an estimated age of 660 million years, this is a relatively young Lambda Boötis star. The stellar classification of shows this peculiarity, with the kA6 notation indicating weaker than normal calcium K-lines in the spectrum. The 'n' following the main sequence luminosity class of V indicates the absorption lines in the spectrum are broad and nebulous. This is caused by the rapid spin of the star, which has a high projected rotational velocity of 206 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PCPaint
PCPaint was the first IBM PC-based mouse-driven GUI paint program. It was developed by John Bridges and Doug Wolfgram. It was later developed into Pictor Paint. The hardware manufacturer Mouse Systems bundled PCPaint with millions of computer mice that they sold, making PCPaint also the best-selling DOS-based paint program of the late 1980s. Background During the dawn of the IBM PC age in 1981, Doug Wolfgram purchased a Microsoft Mouse and decided to write a drawing program for it. The interface was primitive but the program functioned well. In February 1983, Wolfgram traveled to SoftCon in New Orleans where he demonstrated the program to Mouse Systems. Mouse Systems was developing an optical mouse and they wanted to bundle a painting program so they agreed to bundle in Mouse Draw. The original program was written entirely in Assembly language with primitive graphics routines developed by Wolfgram. In 1982 John Bridges worked for an educational software company, Classroom Cons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kapteyn's Star
Kapteyn's Star is a class M1 red subdwarf about 12.83 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Pictor; it is the closest halo star to the Solar System. With a magnitude of nearly 9 it is visible through binoculars or a telescope. Its diameter is 30% of the Sun's, but its luminosity just 1.2% that of the Sun. It may have once been part of the globular cluster Omega Centauri, itself a likely dwarf galaxy swallowed up by the Milky Way in the distant past. The discovery of two planets— Kapteyn b and Kapteyn c—was announced in 2014, but had a mixed history of rejections and confirmations, until a 2021 study refuted both planets. The "planets" are in fact artifacts of the star's rotation and activity. History of observations Attention was first drawn to what is now known as Kapteyn's Star by the Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn in 1898. Under the name CPD-44 612 it was included in the ''Cape photographic Durchmusterung for the equinox 1875 (−38 to −52)'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caelum
Caelum is a faint constellation in the southern sky, introduced in the 1750s by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille and counted among the 88 modern constellations. Its name means “'' chisel''” in Latin, and it was formerly known as Caelum Sculptorium (“''the engravers’ chisel''”); It is a rare word, unrelated to the far more common Latin ''caelum'', meaning “sky, heaven, atmosphere”. It is the eighth-smallest constellation, and subtends a solid angle of around 0.038 steradians, just less than that of Corona Australis. Due to its small size and location away from the plane of the Milky Way, Caelum is a rather barren constellation, with few objects of interest. The constellation's brightest star, Alpha Caeli, is only of magnitude 4.45, and only one other star, (Gamma) γ 1 Caeli, is brighter than magnitude 5 . Other notable objects in Caelum are RR Caeli, a binary star with one known planet approximately away; X Caeli, a Delta Scuti va ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volans
Volans is a constellation in the southern sky. It represents a flying fish; its name is a shortened form of its original name, Piscis Volans. Volans was one of twelve constellations created by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman and it first appeared on a 35-cm diameter celestial globe published in 1597 (or 1598) in Amsterdam by Plancius with Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in Johann Bayer's ''Uranometria'' of 1603. History Volans is one of the 12 constellations that were introduced by the Dutch navigators Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman in the late 16th century. It was first depicted on Petrus Plancius’ globe in 1598. Plancius called the constellation ''Vliegendenvis'' (flying fish). In 1603, Johann Bayer included the constellation in his star atlas ''Uranometria'' under the name Piscis Volans, the flying fish. John Herschel proposed shrinking the name to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Caille Family
Constellation families are collections of constellations sharing some defining characteristic, such as proximity on the celestial sphere, common historical origin, or common mythological theme. In the Western tradition, most of the northern constellations stem from Ptolemy's list in the ''Almagest'' (which in turn has roots that go back to Mesopotamian astronomy), and most of the far southern constellations were introduced by sailors and astronomers who traveled to the south in the 16th to 18th centuries. Separate traditions arose in India and China. Menzel's families Donald H. Menzel, director of the Harvard Observatory, gathered several traditional groups in his popular account, ''A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets'' (1975), and adjusted and regularized them so that his handful of groups covered all 88 of the modern constellations. Of these families, one (Zodiac) straddles the ecliptic which divides the sky into north and south; one (Hercules) has nearly equal porti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A-type Main-sequence Star
An A-type main-sequence star (A V) or A dwarf star is a main-sequence (hydrogen-burning) star of spectral type A and luminosity class V (five). These stars have spectra defined by strong hydrogen Balmer absorption lines. They measure between 1.4 and 2.1 solar masses () and have surface temperatures between 7,600 and 10,000 K. Bright and nearby examples are Altair (A7 V), Sirius A (A1 V), and Vega (A0 V). A-type stars do not have convective zones and thus are not expected to harbor magnetic dynamos. As a consequence, because they do not have strong stellar winds, they lack a means to generate X-ray emissions. In July 2019, astronomers reported finding an A-type star, S5-HVS1, traveling , faster than any other star detected so far. The star is in the Grus (or Crane) constellation in the southern sky, about 29,000 light-years from Earth, and may have been ejected out of the Milky Way after interacting with Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicolas-Louis De Lacaille
Abbé Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille (; 15 March 171321 March 1762), formerly sometimes spelled de la Caille, was a kingdom of France, French astronomer and geodesist who named 14 out of the IAU designated constellations, 88 constellations. From 1750 to 1754, he studied the sky at the Cape Colony, Cape of Good Hope in present-day South Africa. Lacaille observed over 10,000 stars using just a small telescope, half-inch refracting telescope. Biography Born at Rumigny, Ardennes, Rumigny in the Ardennes in eastern France, he attended school in Mantes-sur-Seine (now Mantes-la-Jolie). Afterwards, he studied rhetoric and philosophy at the :fr:Collège de Lisieux, Collège de Lisieux and then theology at the Collège de Navarre. He was left destitute in 1731 by the death of his father, who had held a post in the household of the duchess of Vendôme. However, he was supported in his studies by the Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon, Duc de Bourbon, his father's former patron. After he graduated, h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Puppis
Puppis is a constellation in the southern sky. Puppis, the Latin translation of "poop deck", was originally part of an over-large constellation Argo Navis (the ship of Jason and the Argonauts), which centuries after its initial description, was divided into three parts, the other two being Carina (the keel and hull), and Vela (the sails of the ship). Puppis is the largest of the three constellations in square degrees. It is one of the 88 modern constellations recognized by the International Astronomical Union. Features Argo Navis was sub-divided into three sections in 1752 by the French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, including Argûs in puppi. Despite the division, Lacaille kept a single set of Bayer designations for the whole constellation, Argo. Therefore, Carina has the α, β, and ε, Vela has γ and δ, Puppis has ζ, and so on. In the 19th century, these three sections of Argo became established as separate constellations and were formally included in the list of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorado
Dorado () is a constellation in the southern sky. It was named in the late 16th century and is now one of the 88 modern constellations. Its name refers to the dolphinfish (''Coryphaena hippurus''), which is known as ''dorado'' in Spanish, although it has also been depicted as a swordfish. Dorado contains most of the Large Magellanic Cloud, the remainder being in the constellation Mensa. The South Ecliptic pole also lies within this constellation. Even though the name Dorado is not Latin but Spanish, astronomers give it the Latin genitive form ''Doradus'' when naming its stars; it is treated (like the adjacent asterism Argo Navis) as a feminine proper name of Greek origin ending in -ō (like ''Io'' or ''Callisto'' or ''Argo''), which have a genitive ending ''-ūs''. History Dorado was one of twelve constellations named by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. It appeared: * On a celestial globe published in 1597 (or 1598) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
