Article of the day for February 28, 2016
The Article of the day for February 28, 2016 is Pictor.
Pictor (Latin for "painter") is a small faint constellation between the brilliant star Canopus and the Large Magellanic Cloud in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Normally represented as an easel, Pictor was invented and named by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. The constellation's brightest star is Alpha Pictoris, a white main sequence star of apparent magnitude 3.3. Pictor also hosts RR Pictoris, a cataclysmic variable star system that flared up as a nova in 1925, reaching magnitude 1.2. Pictor's second-brightest star, Beta Pictoris, is surrounded by an unusual dust disk rich in carbon. HD 40307, an orange dwarf, 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 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 a jet of plasma 800,000 light-years long from a supermassive black hole at its centre. In 2006, a gamma ray burst—GRB 060729—was observed in Pictor; its X-ray afterglow was detectable for nearly two years afterwards.
Pictor (Latin for "painter") is a small faint constellation between the brilliant star Canopus and the Large Magellanic Cloud in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Normally represented as an easel, Pictor was invented and named by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. The constellation's brightest star is Alpha Pictoris, a white main sequence star of apparent magnitude 3.3. Pictor also hosts RR Pictoris, a cataclysmic variable star system that flared up as a nova in 1925, reaching magnitude 1.2. Pictor's second-brightest star, Beta Pictoris, is surrounded by an unusual dust disk rich in carbon. HD 40307, an orange dwarf, 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 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 a jet of plasma 800,000 light-years long from a supermassive black hole at its centre. In 2006, a gamma ray burst—GRB 060729—was observed in Pictor; its X-ray afterglow was detectable for nearly two years afterwards.
