Star Stars · In Pavo
Peacock
Peacock, α Pavonis, is a blue-white subgiant in Pavo: the 47th brightest star in the night sky.
Save the chart (SVG) Tactile chart (A4 SVG)
- Constellation
- Pavo
- Designation
- α Pavonis
- Apparent magnitude
- 1.94 · 47th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- B2IV
- Distance
- 179 light-years
- Highest at midnight
- late July
- Position (J2000)
- RA 20h 26m · Dec −56° 44′
A blue-white subgiant, around 26,000 K, like Rigel and Spica. About 67× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. Gives off about 420 times the Sun's visible light. The light you are seeing left around 1847.
When to see it
On the night of Mon 26 Jul 2027, when it is highest around midnight, on each city’s own clock:
| From | Rises | Highest | Sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| London GMT+1 | Never rises | ||
| New York EDT | Never rises | ||
| Singapore GMT+8 | 19:24 | 01:15 · 32° | 07:06 |
| Sydney GMT+10 | Never sets | 00:06 · 67° | — |
Common questions
- Can I see it from 50° north?
- No. From there it never rises: you would have to travel south of 33° north before it cleared the horizon at all.
- Can I see it from 35° south?
- Yes, on any clear night of the year — it is circumpolar from there and never quite sets, though at its lowest it skims the horizon, where trees and haze will hide it.
- When is the best time of year to see it?
- Around late July, when it stands opposite the Sun and is highest at midnight. It comes round about two hours earlier each month, so by late October it is highest in the early evening, and in late April not until the hours before dawn.
- How far away is it, and how bright?
- It is 179 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 1.94 in our sky. From that far, the Sun would be a star of magnitude 8.5: too faint for the eye, a target for binoculars.
- Naked eye, binoculars or telescope?
- The naked eye, even from a city: at magnitude 1.94 it is brighter than the faintest stars a city sky still shows, about magnitude 4.5.
Look for
Start from Alnair: Peacock is 18° south-west of it, a spread hand at arm’s length.
Look for
From 50° north and 35° north it never rises; from the equator it climbs to 33°; from 35° south it is circumpolar and never sets.
Science
Peacock’s surface is about 26,000 K, some 20,200 K hotter than the Sun’s 5,772 K, so its light is strongest at about 110 nm, in the ultraviolet, past the violet end of what the eye can see, where the Sun’s is strongest at 500 nm. Moved to 33 light-years, the distance astronomers compare stars at, it would shine at magnitude −1.8, brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in our sky.
Did you know
Against Alnair, the brighter star the hop starts from: the two look about as bright as each other in our sky; Alnair is 101 light-years away and Peacock 179 light-years, so side by side Peacock would give off 2.6 times as much light as Alnair.
Science
Peacock is the 80th nearest to us of the 156 stars on these pages with a measured distance. Its nearest neighbour among them in space is Lang-Exster, about 54 light-years from it; on our sky the two are 15° apart.
Look for
The Sun passes 36° north of Peacock around late January, when it is highest at noon, in daylight: the weeks either side are its worst time of year. It is 35° from the plane of the Milky Way.