Pav - Pavo the Peacock
Special Stars
Alpha-Pavonis, known to navigators as the Peacock star. Magnitude 1.9. 230 LY. 700 times brighter than the Sun.
Origin and History
One of the eleven southern constellations created by Pieter Dirksz Keyser and Frederick de Houtman in 1596. These were published in Plate Aaa of Johann Bayer, Uranographia (1603).
Skylore, Literature and Culture
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 Navis, was changed into a peacock by Juno.
"The Indian upon God," by William Butler Yeats, offers a metaphor about the Peacock and the stars in the last stanza.
