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: the Sun sits at the opposite point of the sky and the star culminates around midnight. How high it climbs above the horizon depends on the latitude you watch from.
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The signature wall
Stelvia's sky works like a signature wall: anyone can leave their name and a message on a real star, and that signature goes up on the map for everyone to read. Signing is free.
A signature without a lock can be replaced by someone else's. The lock makes the signature permanent and lets you choose a symbolic name for the star, always shown next to the star's catalogue identifier. How the lock works
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A public signature from a real person. The chosen name is a symbolic denomination within Stelvia, with no official standing or IAU recognition: the sky is not for sale and belongs to no one.
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
A symbolic commemorative gift: neither the signature nor the chosen name implies ownership of the star or recognition by the IAU.
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