- Pictor is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere, located between the star Canopus and the Large Magellanic Cloud. Its name is Latin for 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 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 (visual) magnitude 1.2 in 1925 before fading into obscurity.
- Paul Verhoeven (allthetropes.org)
Paul Verhoeven (born 18 July 1938) is a Dutch film director, film producer, television director, television producer, and screenwriter. Verhoeven is active in both the Netherlands and Hollywood. Explicit violent and/or sexual content and social satire are trademarks of both his drama and science fiction films. He is best known for directing the films RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Basic Instinct (1992), Showgirls (1995), Starship Troopers (1997), and Elle (2016).
