Pictor



Pictor is a small faint constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere, located between the brilliant star Canopus and the Large Magellanic Cloud. Latin for painter, its name is an abbreviation of the older name Equuleus Pictoris (the "painter's easel"). Normally represented as an easel, Pictor was invented and named by Abbé Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. The constellation's brightest star is Alpha Pictoris, a white main sequence star of apparent (visual) magnitude 3.3 around 97 light-years away from Earth. Pictor also hosts RR Pictoris, a cataclysmic variable star system that flared up as a nova, reaching 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 found to have planets. Among them is HD 40307, an orange dwarf that has six planets orbiting it, one of which—HD 40307 g—is a potential super-Earth in the circumstellar habitable zone. Kapteyn's Star, the nearest star in Pictor to Earth, is a red dwarf located 12.76 light-years away that was found to have two super-Earths in orbit in 2014.Pictor A is a radio galaxy that is shooting an 800,000 light-year long jet of plasma from a supermassive black hole at its centre. In 2006, a gamma ray burst—GRB 060729—was observed in Pictor, its extremely long X-ray afterglow detectable for nearly two years afterwards. Pictor is a small constellation bordered by Columba to the north, Puppis and Carina to the east, Caelum to the northwest, Dorado to the southwest and Volans to the south.

Etymology
Equuleus Pictoris, is the name of this constellation 'The Painter's Easel': Easel is an old Germanic synonym for donkey and is borrowed from Dutch ezel, which means literally 'ass' (donkey). An easel (generally a tripod) is an upright frame for displaying or supporting something such as an artist's canvas, or a school blackboard. The comparison being of loading a painting on to a stand much as a burden is loaded on to an ass. The wordass is related to Greek onos, ass, probably ultimately from the same source as Sumerian anse, ass. The wordass is related to: asinine, easel, (these words from Latin asinus, ass), onager (onos, ass + agrios, wild, from Greek onus, ass).

HGS Session References
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