Pictor
What is Pictor?
Constellations· Southern summer · right beside Canopus. Lacaille's tribute to the painter's easel. Its stars are faint, but beta Pictoris — a young star with a directly imaged dust disk and planets — is a showcase for studying how planetary systems form.
📍 Visible from where you are right now — computed in your browser
bearing · altitude · rise time · best time tonight
Where Pictor is in your sky right now: https://nowsky.org/solar/sky?sel=con:Pictor — location and time set automatically, no login.
Stars of the figure
| Star | Magnitude |
|---|---|
| Beta Pictoris | 3.9 |
The 1 brightest of the 2 stars used in the figure (1 lines). Lower magnitude means brighter.
Deep-sky objects near this constellation
Constellation basics
| Season | Dec–Feb evenings; not visible from Korea |
|---|---|
| Brightest star | α Pictoris, mag 3.2 |
| How to find | a faint line of stars southwest of Canopus |
| Area rank | 59th of 88 |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Frequently asked
- When can I see Pictor?
- Dec–Feb evenings; not visible from Korea.
- How do I find Pictor?
- a faint line of stars southwest of Canopus.
- What is the brightest star in Pictor?
- Beta Pictoris, magnitude 3.9.
- Where is Pictor in the sky right now?
- Open the sky view for your location and time and it shows the position in the sky right now.
Pictor A — a jet 800,000 light-years long
Four hundred and eighty million light-years away in the direction of Pictor lies the radio galaxy Pictor A. A jet launched from its central black hole extends 800,000 light-years beyond the galaxy and, where it strikes the intergalactic medium, inflates huge radio lobes. Fifteen years of Chandra X-ray observations confirmed that electrons in the jet spiral at close to the speed of light as they radiate.
The jet is eight times the diameter of the Milky Way, a case of a single black hole carrying energy across a space far larger than a galaxy. Such jets heat the gas in galaxy clusters and can suppress star formation, and they are studied as a reason why galaxies stop growing. The constellation named for the painter's easel holds, along with the planets of Beta Pictoris, one of the longest brushstrokes in the universe.
The constellation in depth
Pictor was drawn by Lacaille in the 1750s and originally named the Painter's Easel. Because it sits right beside brilliant Canopus it is easy to locate, but its own stars are only third and fourth magnitude, so the picture takes imagination. Later cartographers shortened the name to simply the Painter. It ranks 59th in area among the 88 constellations.
Beta Pictoris, about 63 light-years away and only 20 million years old, was the first star whose circumstellar dust disk was photographed, in 1984. Since then two planets heavier than Jupiter have been imaged directly, and comets have been caught evaporating inside the disk — a living model of what our early solar system may have looked like. Kapteyn's Star, about 13 light-years away, has one of the largest proper motions known, and lies here too.
At declinations of −43° to −64° it cannot be seen from Korea. From the southern hemisphere, find it on December to February evenings as a faint chain of stars southwest of Canopus. In the Sky view, set Sydney on a January evening and zoom in beside Canopus; beta Pictoris appears under 'more objects'. Its stars are faint, so keep the constellation lines on.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.