Pictor is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere, located between the star Canopus and the Large Magellanic Cloud. Its name is Latin for painter, and is an abbreviation of the older name Equuleus Pictoris. Normally represented as an easel, Pictor was named by Abbé Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. The constellation's brightest star is Alpha Pictoris, a white main-sequence star around 97 light-years away from Earth. Pictor also hosts RR Pictoris, a cataclysmic variable star system that flared up as a nova, reaching apparent (visual) magnitude 1.2 in 1925 before fading into obscurity.
A stellar association is a very loose star cluster, looser than both open clusters and globular clusters. Stellar associations will normally contain from 10 to 100 or more visible stars. An association is primarily identified by commonalities in its member stars' movement vectors, ages, and chemical compositions. These shared features indicate that the members share a common origin; nevertheless, they have become gravitationally unbound, unlike clusters, and the member stars will drift apart over millions of years, scattering throughout their neighborhood within the galaxy.
Beta Pictoris is the second brightest star in the constellation Pictor. It is located 63.4 light-years (19.4 pc) from the Solar System, and is 1.75 times as massive and 8.7 times as luminous as the Sun. The Beta Pictoris system is very young, only 20 to 26 million years old, although it is already in the main sequence stage of its evolution. Beta Pictoris is the title member of the Beta Pictoris moving group, an association of young stars which share the same motion through space and have the same age.
Beta Scorpii is a multiple star system in the southern zodiac constellation of Scorpius. It bore the traditional proper name of Acrab, though the International Astronomical Union now regards that name as applying only to the β Scorpii Aa component.
HD 147513 is a star in the southern constellation of Scorpius. It was first catalogued by Italian astronomer Piazzi in his star catalogue as "XVI 55". With an apparent magnitude of 5.38, according to the Bortle scale it is visible to the naked eye from suburban skies. Based upon stellar parallax measurements by the Hipparcos spacecraft, HD 147513 lies some 42 light years from the Sun.
Sigma Scorpii, is a multiple star system in the constellation of Scorpius, located near the red supergiant Antares, which outshines it. This system has a combined apparent visual magnitude of +2.88, making it one of the brighter members of the constellation. Based upon parallax measurements made during the Hipparcos mission, the distance to Sigma Scorpii is roughly 696 light-years (214 parsecs). North et al. (2007) computed a more accurate estimate of 568+75
−59 light years.
Alpha Lupi is a blue giant star, and the brightest star in the southern constellation of Lupus. According to the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, its apparent visual magnitude of 2.3 makes it readily visible to the naked eye even from highly light-polluted locales. Based upon parallax measurements made during the Hipparcos mission, the star is around 460 light-years from the solar system. It is one of the nearest supernova candidates.
AB Pictoris is a K-type main-sequence star, located 163.5 light-years away in the southern constellation of Pictor. It has been identified as a member of the young Tucana–Horologium association. The star has been classified as a BY Draconis variable, indicating it has an active chromosphere. It is an X-ray source and displays emission lines in its spectrum.
The Scorpius–Centaurus association is the nearest OB association to the Sun. This stellar association is composed of three subgroups and its distance is about 130 parsecs or 420 light-years. Using improved Hipparcos data, Rizzuto and colleagues analysed nearby stars more closely, bringing the number of known members to 436. They doubt the need to add a subclassification because they found a more continuous spread of stars.
Delta Lupi is a star in the southern circumpolar constellation of Lupus. In traditional Chinese astronomy, it is "the 2nd (star) of the Cavalry Officer" (騎官二). With an apparent visual magnitude of 3.2, it is the fourth-brightest star in the constellation. The distance to this star has been measured using the parallax technique, yielding an estimate of roughly 900 light-years with a 15% margin of error.
Alpha Muscae, Latinized from α Muscae, is a star in the southern circumpolar constellation of Musca. With an apparent visual magnitude of +2.7, it is the brightest star in the constellation. The distance to this star has been determined using parallax measurements, giving an estimate of about 315 light-years from Earth.
The TW Hydrae association is a group of very young low-mass stars and substellar objects located approximately 25–75 parsecs from Earth. They share a common motion and appear to all be roughly the same age, 10±3 million years old. It is the youngest such association within 100 pc from Earth.
HD 15115 is a single star in the equatorial constellation of Cetus. It is readily visible in binoculars or a small telescope, but is considered too dim to be seen with the naked eye at an apparent visual magnitude of 6.76. The distance to this object is 160 light years based on parallax, and it is slowly drifting further away at the rate of about 1 km/s. It has been proposed as a member of the Beta Pictoris moving group or the Tucana-Horologium association of co-moving stars; there is some ambiguity as to its true membership.
UScoCTIO 108 is a binary system, approximately 470 light-years away in the Upper Scorpius (USco) OB association. The primary, UScoCTIO 108A, with mass around 0.06 solar masses, is a brown dwarf or low-mass red dwarf. The secondary, UScoCTIO 108B, with a mass around the deuterium burning limit of 13 Jupiter masses, would be classified as either a brown dwarf or an extrasolar planet.
An exocomet, or extrasolar comet, is a comet outside the Solar System, which includes rogue comets and comets that orbit stars other than the Sun. The first exocomets were detected in 1987 around Beta Pictoris, a very young A-type main-sequence star. There are now a total of 27 stars around which exocomets have been observed or suspected.
N Scorpii, also known as HD 148703, is a solitary, bluish-white hued star located in the southern constellation Scorpius. It has an apparent magnitude of 4.23, making it readily visible to the naked eye. N Scorpii was initially given the Bayer designation Alpha Normae by Lacaille but it was later moved from Norma to Scorpius. N Scorpii is currently located 550 light years away based on parallax measurements from the Hipparcos satellite and is part of the Upper Scorpius–Centaurus region of the Scorpius–Centaurus association.
HD 146624 is a single, white-hued star in the southern zodiac constellation of Scorpius. It is faintly visible to the naked eye, having an apparent visual magnitude of 4.80. The distance to HD 146624 can be estimated from its annual parallax shift of 23.0 mas, yielding a separation of 142 light years. At that distance, the visual magnitude is reduced by an extinction of 0.17 due to interstellar dust. It is a member of the Beta Pictoris moving group, a set of ~12 million year old stars that share a common motion through space.
HD 106906 b is a directly imaged planetary-mass companion and candidate exoplanet orbiting the star HD 106906, in the constellation Crux at about 336 ± 13 light-years (103 ± 4 pc) from Earth. It is estimated to be about eleven times the mass of Jupiter and is located about 738 AU away from its host star. HD 106906 b is an oddity; while its mass estimate is nominally consistent with identifying it as an exoplanet, it appears at a much wider separation from its parent star than thought possible for in-situ formation from a protoplanetary disk.
HD 115600 is a star in the constellation Centaurus and a member of the Scorpius–Centaurus association, the nearest OB association to the Sun and the host star of a bright Kuiper belt-like debris ring.
HD 142250 is a star in the constellation Scorpius. It has a visual apparent magnitude of 6.1, being visible to the naked eye only in excellent seeing conditions. From parallax measurements, it is located 486 light-years (149 parsecs) away from Earth. This distance, together with the star's proper motion, indicate that HIP 77900 is a member of the Upper Scorpius subgroup of the Scorpius–Centaurus association, the nearest OB association to the Sun. This subgroup is the youngest of the three of the association, with an estimated age of 11 million years.
