Star profile
Alpha Pictor
What is Alpha Pictor
It marks the apex of Pictor, the small constellation of the Painter's Easel sketched by the abbé Lacaille beneath Cape Town's skies in the 18th century. A blue-white subgiant spinning on its axis at more than 200 km/s, its dizzying rotation places it in a rare family — the Lambda Boötis stars — whose atmospheres show an anomalous scarcity of calcium and other metals. Roughly 97 light-years away, it shines with the force of forty suns from a furnace of 7,500 degrees.
Where it is and when to see it
Alpha 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 February: 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 Alpha Pictor
- Constellation
- Pictor
- Apparent magnitude
- 3.24
- Distance
- 96.6 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 102.048° · Dec -61.941°
- Catalogue
- HIP 32607 · HD 50241
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.
- Beta Pictor3.85
- Gamma Pictor4.50
- Delta Pictor4.72
- HIP 289915.04
- Eta 2 Pictor5.05
- HIP 276215.16
- HIP 309325.20
- HIP 279475.29