- Pictor (Wikipedia)
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.
- 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 two exoplanets (extrasolar planets).
- Star Tales - Pictor (ianridpath.com)
One of the constellations representing technical and artistic apparatus introduced into the southern sky by the Frenchman Nicolas Louis de Lacaille after his observing expedition to the Cape of Good Hope in 1751–52. It lies under the keel of the now-dismembered Greek constellation Argo Navis, the ship of the Argonauts, next to the bright star Canopus. In fact the four brightest stars in Pictor, labelled α, β, γ, and δ by Lacaille, had been catalogued by the Dutch explorer Frederick de Houtman as part of Argo a century and half earlier.
