PAVO

| PAVO Chart | Midnight Culmination | Skylore | Description | Special Stars |

Constellation Data

Name: PAVO Translation: Peacock Abbreviation: Pav Genitive: Pavonis Size: 44 Regions: Southern Located Between: Indus, Telescopium RA: 20 hours Decl: -65 degrees Season: Winter Midnight Culmination: July 15

What is the Genitive form? What is Right Ascension (RA)? Is this constellation ever visible from my latitude? What is Declination? Where should I look for a constellation on a date before or after its midnight culmination? What is Midnight Culmination?

Skylore

The last stanza of "The Indian upon God," by William Butler Yeats, offers a wonderful metaphor about the Peacock and the stars.

Description

Pavo the Peacock is one of four birds in the southern skies (cf. Grus the Crane, Phoenix, and Tucana the Toucan). Argos, who built the ship Argo.htm">Argo (see Argo.htm">Argo Navis), was changed into a peacock by Juno.

• Legend: In the constellation chart above...
• Star colors represent their spectral types (even for double stars).
• Bright star labels are yellow; significant other stars are labelled in magenta.
• The size of each star indicates its relative magnitude.
• Constellation names are light blue.
• Grid lines represent either 10 degree intervals of declination above or below the equator, or intervals of one hour (=15 degrees) of right ascension (measured along the equator).
• Messier object numbers are pink.
• Galaxies are ovals: blue if spiral, yellow if elliptical, light blue if irregular.
• Globular clusters are gold starbursts.
• Open clusters are dotted white circles.
• Planetary nebula are green diamonds.
• Bright nebula are magenta squares.
• Dark nebula are grey rectangles.
• Green x's are x-ray sources.
• Purple O's with a diagonal slash through them are quasars.

Special Stars

Alpha-Pavonis, known to navigators as the Peacock star. Magnitude 1.9. 230 LY. 700 times brighter than the Sun.

Table of 25 Brightest Stars.
What is apparent stellar magnitude?

Origin

Late 16th century

©1997 Welcome to the Basic Celestial Phenomena web site. To provide explanations of basic observational astronomy to students, teachers, families, and visitors to planetariums these pages have been written by an ex-OBU Planetarium Director, Kerry Magruder; the OBU Natural Sciences Coordinator, Mike Keas; and some of the students who work in the OBU planetarium.

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