Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 23, 2023
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Pavo is a constellation in the southern sky whose name is Latin for "peacock". It is one of twelve constellations established by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. First appearing on a 35 cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in 1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius, it was depicted in Johann Bayer's star atlas Uranometria of 1603. Pavo's brightest member, Alpha Pavonis, is also known as Peacock and appears as a 1.91-magnitude blue-white star, but is actually a spectroscopic binary. Delta Pavonis is a Sun-like star some 19.9 light years distant. Six of the star systems in Pavo have been found to host planets, including HD 181433 with a super-Earth, and HD 172555 with evidence of a major interplanetary collision in the past few thousand years. Pavo also contains NGC 6752, the fourth-brightest globular cluster in the sky, and NGC 6744, a spiral galaxy which closely resembles our Milky Way, with a diameter twice as wide. (Full article...)