The Caldwell Objects

93 & 101
9 3
The Starfish; The Windmill
NGC 6752
Type: Globular Cluster
Con: Pavo
RA: 19 h 10 m 51.8 s
Dec: -59° 58' 55"
Mag: 5.4
Diam: 29'
Dist: 13,000 light-years
Disc: James Dunlop, included in his
1827 catalog
J. H ERSCHEL: Globular,
bright, round, pretty rich,
pretty suddenly much
brighter towards the middle,
5', stars of two sizes, 11 [th] to 12[th] magnitude and
15 [th] to 16[th] magnitude, south preceding [to the
southwest] is an elegant first class double star, (h 3778)
GC: Globular cluster, very bright, very large, irregularly round,
well resolved, clearly consisting of stars, stars of magnitude 11
to 16.
T HE CELESTIAL HERITAGE OF P AVO, THE
Peacock, can be traced to two different mythologies.
The first would make a good modern
soap opera. It starts with the sexual escapades of
Jupiter and the maiden Ιο. Io becomes pregnant.
Jupiter's wife, Juno, discovers the truth and
becomes enraged. For revenge, Juno turns Io into
a heifer, then orders Argus — a demon-giant
with 100 eyes — to "keep an eye" (any eye!) on Io.
Enter swift Mercury, who, under Jupiter's urging,
slays Argus. Io is freed. Juno is horrified. But she
can't let those loyal eyes of Argus go forever
unseen. So she removes them from the giant's
head and attaches them, one by one, to the tail
feathers of her favorite bird, the peacock. And
poof!— the peacock becomes a sacred symbol of
immortality. The second
370
NGC: Globular cluster, bright, very large, irregularly
round, well resolved, clearly consisting of stars, stars of
magnitude 11 to 16.
myth is shorter. When Argos (not to be confused
with Argus) — the builder of the Ship Argo,
which Jason sailed — died, Juno turned him into
a peacock and placed him in the sky. I'd buy
serial rights to the first myth.
Sometime between 1595 and 1597, Pieter
Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman
invented the stellar Peacock that we turn our eyes
to today. Johann Bayer included the figure in his
1603 Uranometria atlas. Pavo has 378 square
degrees, making it the 44th-largest constellation.
It can be found south of the "glass eye,"
Telescopium (the Telescope), which, in turn, lies
south of Sagittarius, the Archer. Secondmagnitude
Alpha (α) Pavonis (Peacock) displays
its pure blue luster in the constellation's
northeastern corner. Peacock's declina-
Deep-Sky Companions: The Caldwell Objects