Star profile
Eta 1 Pictor
What is Eta 1 Pictor
Eta-1 Pictoris peeks out from the Painter, that small southern constellation invented by Lacaille in honour of the artist's easel. It is a yellowish-white F-type star 85 light-years away, a relatively close neighbour whose light takes less than a century to reach us: what arrives tonight set out while the embers of the First World War were still smouldering. It shares the sky with its celebrated neighbour Beta Pictoris, one of the first stars around which a giant planet was directly photographed.
Where it is and when to see it
Eta 1 Pictor lies in the southern celestial hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky. Its best month of the year is November, when it culminates around midnight.
- From London it never rises above the horizon.
- From New York it culminates about 1° above the horizon.
- From Sydney it culminates about 75° above the horizon.
It can be seen from anywhere south of 41° N.
It ranks no. 12 in brightness among the 23 stars of Pictor in our catalogue. To find it, start from Alpha Pictor, the brightest: it lies about 19° away (a fist at arm's length covers about 10°).
The light you see today left it about 85 years ago.
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Astronomical data for Eta 1 Pictor
- Constellation
- Pictor
- Apparent magnitude
- 5.37
- Distance
- 85.1 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 75.703° · Dec -49.151°
- Catalogue
- HIP 23482 · HD 32743
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Other stars in Pictor
Pictor has 23 stars in Stelvia's catalogue. Here are a few of them.
- Alpha Pictor3.24
- Beta Pictor3.85
- Gamma Pictor4.50
- HIP 279475.29
- Lambda Pictor5.30
- HIP 272435.31
- Zeta Pictor5.44
- HIP 257685.46